Anyone can put together a mish-mash of baroque music. Not everyone can play it as engagingly as violinist Rachel Podger. That tension was inherent in the programme she had devised for the final concert of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s winter season. Music shines through Podger: she has that combination of joyfulness and chastity that turns a musician into an extension of a composer’s imaginative arm. There’s no technical exhibitionism, no self-promotion at the expense of colleagues, no stylistic point-making. You feel the music is being animated by a pure soul, bringing the page to life as if the ink is still fresh.

But for all the beauty of her musical personality and the depth of her academic hinterland, Podger is no programme-maker. This tour of the Italian horizon in the 17th and early 18th centuries had a random quality that Podger’s spoken introductions did little to illuminate. What possible connection, other than nationality, had Giovanni Paolo Cima’s unembellished 1610 sonata for violin and continuo, which began the evening, with the quasi-orgiastic fervour of Geminiani’s Concerto grosso No 12 at the end? Why did Vivaldi’s Concerto for four violins Op 3 No 10 sound so much more sophisticated, in terms of rhythm and modulation, than Legrenzi’s Sonata La Cremona? And what was the point of tacking on Bach’s Air on a G String, instead of another Italian work?

Concerts such as this have huge educative potential and Podger is surely too intelligent to accept that the only answer to these questions is her own enlightened musicianship. What her programme did establish is that the Italian baroque ranges far further in style and personality than we like to think. And there are still jewels to uncover – such as the Vivaldi double horn concerto, with its sedate clip-clop gait, that Andrew Clark (great name, brilliant valveless hornist) and Roger Montgomery winningly brought to our attention. ★★★★☆ Tel +44 0870 163 3899