Bernardini meets Dreyer: a distinguished period-instrument oboist explores the music of a little-known Florentine forebear.

What we do know is that Dreyer travelled with his brother, a singer and impresario, across Europe and as far as St Petersburg.

In the early 1730s Dreyer was playing in Venice, where he most likely met Vivaldi, and a musical link between the two men is illustrated by these six appealing sonatas. At any rate, Bernadini is drawn to these sonatas, as he explains in a booklet introduction, ‘because they combine ornamented and very expressive slow movements with fast movements of great virtuosity, using the possibilities of the two-key oboe to the extreme.’

Bernadini draws out various thematic correspondences between particular movements of the sonatas and various parts of Vivaldi’s output, while observing a more general Vivaldian flavour to the writing.

We might know more but for Dreyer’s sudden and unexplained death at the age of 34, ‘due to an unfortunate event,’ according to the best historical record available. The sonatas may be enjoyed on their own terms, however, as stylish examples of Italian Baroque chamber writing at its zenith.

They are performed here by Bernadini on a copy of a 1730 instrument by Giovanni Maria Anciuti (1674-1744), the most important Italian wind instrument maker of the time. Not only is this the closest available instrument to Dreyer’s sonatas in terms of place and date, but it is also one of the few 18th-century oboes to feature the low C sharp, which Dreyer notates at the end of the Fourth Sonata. He is joined by a quartet of fellow Italian period-instrument specialists, who supply a richly varied continuo section.