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It used to be regarded as slightly perverse playing baroque music on authentic period instruments, but the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment changed all that for good and this wonderful last 2015 Festival night of music and song proved beyond all doubt that this is how it should be heard.

Their first offering, Telemann’s Violin Concerto The Frogs, could have gone on a lot longer for me and I was sorry there was no more of this not so well known composer. It’s a vigorous, manly, robust sound, sonorous and somehow deeply moving. Highlights were the languidly lovely adagio, so elegantly emotional, and the sprightly menuet.

But the rest of the programme was unadulterated Vivaldi which was actually very far from disappointing, starting with the Violin Concerto Spring, a marvellous creation of tension and expectation. If at first I feared over-familiarity might kick in I was soon reassured – the OAE play it as if it were brand new. This amazingly descriptive music anticipates the modern soundtrack, and the perennial miracle is that it works.

The next treat was a Zefiretti from the Vivaldi opera Ercole sul Termodonte featuring soprano Sarah Tynan, an exquisite piece perfect for an English summer evening, followed appropriately by Vivaldi’s Summer with its deceptively languorous opening punctuated by the sort of sudden squalls we can all recognise.

I’m sure a glass of wine during the interval can’t be the only reason the second half of this concert just seemed to get better and better, but maybe it did help just a bit.

Opening with Vivaldi’s magnificent Gelido in ogni vena from the opera Il Farnace, we were now presented with an edgy, attention grabbing aria with a darkly impassioned vocal line to which Ms Tynan gave full value as the summer light faded outside, before the stately Allegro of Autumn began. Another aria from La Verita in cimento was sprightly and uplifting before Winter, opening with its flurries of snow and a promise of hard frost to come.

A lovely evening with for me some special magic which seemed more than the sum of its parts ensuring that the 2015 Festival ended as it had begun, on a high note.

This concert was dedicated to the memory of the late LFA Chairman John Gilbert Harvey, to whose memory this was a fine tribute.