Not every concert by an early-music group obliges the audience to check that everything is being done to the letter.

Research into instrumentation and performing methods transformed the sound of such music, and musicians playing authentically was once the bottom line requirement for the listener.

Not any more, and thank goodness for that. In any case, there are other aspects of so-called ‘period music’ that catch the attention, such as the need to keep the harpsichord in tune.

David Wright, the keyboard player of the Brandenburg Bach Soloists, an international ensemble directed by violinist Hans-Peter Hofmann, spent time before this concert began and almost all of the interval keeping his harpsichord up to pitch.

The problem here, though, and one of the perils of performing on stage behind a theatre’s proscenium arch, was that the instrument could barely be heard. It was heard in the extended solo work of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 5, though not without a few hiccups of a different sort.

Elsewhere it was the bravura of the ten musicians that energised the music, not least in Mr Hofmann’s animated leadership and flautist Fiona Slominska’s contribution to Bach’s Orchestral Suite No 2 in B minor.

None of the music played tempted the musicians to perform half-heartedly, including Vivaldi’s Double Violin Concert in A minor (Mr Hofmann and Laura Virtanen) and Handel’s Concerto Grosso Op 6 No.1, with its concertino group of two violins and cello (Alessandro Sanguinetti).

It’s the spirit in which Baroque music is played that counts most of all and this group supplied it abundantly.