Haydn’s concertos do not count among his most popular works and it’s perhaps not difficult to see why. Composed during his first decade as Kapellmeister to the Esterházy family, they don’t exhibit the tautness of design of the symphonies of the period. First movements are arranged in a sort of hybrid between the old-fashioned ritornello style of the Baroque period and an embryonic sonata form; and, while slow movements are songful and finales acrobatic, there’s little opportunity for anything that delves much deeper than sweetness of tone or virtuoso display. The melodic imperative implied by the concerto of the time seems to have interested Haydn less than the distillation and exploration of motif that is the province of the symphony.

Nevertheless, the three authentic violin concertos presented here (out of more than 10 that have been attributed to Haydn at one time or another) are never less than finely crafted and utterly charming. Recordings of all three on period instruments are few and far between: a search for the standard comparison – by Simon Standage with Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert (Archiv, 5/89) – reveals it to be available now only as a download. So this disc stands on its own merits, which are considerable: Carmignola plays as if this music had been composed specifically for him, with all the tonal richness and agility required of him and with a pinpoint accuracy of intonation that occasionally defeats Standage, while his Parisian accompanists match all their frontman’s vivacity and charisma. There’s no denying that these works aren’t the last word in violin concerto composition but, performed as scintillatingly as this, they’re worth an hour of anyone’s time.