Venice is a bit like love as a baroque recital theme: you can make almost anything fit. But, despite a desperately overheated booklet essay, Venetian Silhouettes is the real deal, a programme almost as enticing, surprising, beguiling as La Serenissima herself.

The title is a bit misleading; there’s nothing black and white about these performances of little-known arias by Caldara, Lotti, Vivaldi and Albinoni, or the landscape they collectively paint of 18th-century Venice – the post-naval power now dedicated to pleasure and sensation. Belgian soprano Sophie Junker (2010 winner of the London Handel Competition) deploys the full palette of colours in a program that takes us from the absolute stillness and resigned purity of Iphigenia’s final farewell through to fiery vengeance of the wronged lover.

Before we meet Junker, though, it’s the {oh!} Orkiestra who make their presence felt. Directed by Martyna Pastuszka, this leading Polish baroque ensemble delivers some seriously stylish playing. Theirs is a distinctive tone, less edgy than Concerto Italiano or Pomo d’Oro, more about creamy, soft-grained blend. A neat trick in Lotti’s opener Con fiamme, e con...