Like so many 17th-century Italian musicians, Giovanni Legrenzi led a peripatetic life. Following a conventional enough start to his career in Italy, a brief period was spent at Versailles before moving to Venice; there he passed the last five years of his life as maestro di cappella at St Mark’s Basilica, still one of the most prestigious musical institutions in Italy in the years immediately following the death of Francesco Cavalli.

It was also in Venice that most of his music was published, and it is from the four volumes of sonatas that form the core of his writing for instruments that most of the works on this recording are taken. In purely structural terms, Legrenzi’s instrumental sonatas follow the traditions established by earlier generations of Italian composers. Each consists of four or five movements, with the slow ones often being purely functional, to facilitate transition rather than establishing a contrasting mood. By way of contrast, Clematis have included a number of pieces from the Op 16 Balletti e correnti, dance types that were to feed into the fully fledged sonata da camera.

All are essentially designed for performance by strings, and Clematis have sensibly decided to vary the overall sound by imaginatively scoring the continuo lines for a wide range of supporting instruments including theorbo, guitar, positive organ and harpsichord. This welcome variety increases the almost kaleidoscopic shifting of focus, for all these works are short. Legrenzi’s real gifts lie in writing catchy tunes, the adroit manipulation of short motifs and attractive quasi-fugato writing. Clematis have responded with carefully thought-out phrasing, a well-balanced control of ensemble and a sensitive feel for style; the result, recorded in two different locations to good acoustic effect, makes for attractive listening.