Giuliano Carmignola (violin), Venice Baroque Orchestra/Andrea Marcon Archiv Produktion 477 6606 ***

Pietro Nardini, the best-known of the composers in this collection of Italian violin concertos, is a rare enough bird that you'd be luckily to find his name in a concert anywhere in Ireland more than once in 10 years.

Fans of quirky difficulties, of the technical contortions that fiddlers were exposed to in the days before Paganini, will delight not just in Nardini’s Concerto in G, but also in the works by Domenico Dall’Oglio, Michele Stratico and Antonio Lolli, which Giuliano Carmignola negotiates with impressive adroitness. However, in spite of the quality of the playing, it’s hard not to find much of the music just a shade far-fetched. It’s often a case of music at the service of virtuosity rather than the other way around. www.dgwebshop.com