Rather in the manner of Viktoria Mullova, Fabio Biondi’s playing displays a remarkable stylistic eclecticism; and it is of some significance that he transcends the boundaries not only of musical genres in his recordings and performances, but also of stylistic approaches. Being an authentic aesthetic chameleon in an age of repertoire plurality is difficult and runs the risk of not doing any of these things completely convincingly. Certainly (and this is no bad thing) Biondi’s playing, whatever the style of performance, is almost unmistakably his, with a certain freedom and rhetorical capriciousness wedded to a conspicuously emotive understanding.

Biondi’s particular interest in period-instrument performance emerged during his teenage years, at a t...