The advantage a recording has over a live performance is the same as that of a printed score: freed from the shackles of time and place, one can feed as much or as little as, hunger dictates. This is often crucial with collections of works that weren’t intended to be listened to at one sitting. Yet there’s an assumption that people will listen through from beginning to end. So how to ensure the variety necessary to maintain interest?

The wonderful Gywn Roberts takes her cue from historical uncertainty: for much of the Baroque period, the word “flute” could have meant either a recorder or the transverse flute proper. Thus, in this selection of works from Neapolitan composer Francesco Mancini’s 1724 collection “Solos for a flute with a Thorough Bass for the Harpsichord or for the Bass Violin” she uses a variety of instruments: two alto recorders, a voice flute (slightly lower in pitch than a treble recorder) and a transverse flute. Not only that: the continuo section continually, if you’ll excuse the pun, changes in colour and texture as Richard Stone and Adam Pearl, accompanied for the most part by Lisa Terry on cello, employ various combinations of harpsichord, organ, archlute, theorbo and guitar.

The results are as delightful as they are compelling, with Roberts’ sweet tone and overtly cantabile style (especially noticeable in the aria-like slow movements) imparting an irresistible warmth to Mancini’s sometimes affectingly simple, sometimes academically complex writing. Just gorgeous.