Steffani: Danze e Ouvertures

This is a companion disc to Bartoli's Mission and Decca's new Stabat Mater recording, highlighting Steffani's position as a composer who wrote hardly any instrumental music. Diego Fasolis and I Barocchisti have assembled a collection of overtures and dances from his operas. Steffani was Italian and spent much of his career in Germany, but the flavour on this disc is French. The music is tuneful, the orchestration inventive, and there are some wonderful effects – a fizzing Prélude pour les Démons (all of 19 seconds, from Henrico Leone), a percussion-rich Terremoto (from Niobe) and a darkly subterranean Les Ombres (from I trionfi del fato). But, beware: the selections are so short-breathed that the 75-minute disc runs to 43 tracks, url.ie/4w4k