We’ve all of us experienced authentic performances of Bach and Beethoven, and most people nowadays will have come across historically informed Berlioz and Brahms, but what about period-instrument Gilbert and Sullivan? That’s the intriguing idea behind a hugely enjoyable new album by British tenor David Webb and the Academy of Ancient Music, conducted by John Andrews. Entitled Arthur Sullivan: Songs for Tenor, it is released this month by Resonus Classics.

Webb is a versatile singer who flies to Australia later this year to sing Jupiter in Pinchgut Opera’s new staging of Handel’s Semele. Andrews is one of the UK’s go-to conductors for out-of-the-way repertoire. Over the years, as their paths crossed, they gradually hatched a plan for a recital spanning the whole of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s illustrious career, where arias familiar from the operettas would rub shoulders with some of his so-called serious music.

John Andrews. Photo © Edmund Choo

“At the same time, I’d been having conversations with the Academy of Ancient Music about faithfully reproducing the Savoy Orchestra of the late-19th century using instruments of the period,” Andrews recalls, sipping a low-alcohol beer on a sunny afternoon...