Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin / English Voices (Lufthansa Festival)

The bosses of the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, now in its 23rd year, have managed again to assemble a baggage-carousel of mouthwatering concerts that use local as well as international talent; each concert seeming - in terms of repertoire at least - as tempting as the other. This is also a festival that has a knack of providing a platform for artists who don't always hog the early music limelight but prove scintillating talents nonetheless, of which Saturday's concert at St John's Smith Square proved another keen example. Unfortunately though, the performance of Handel's Solomon was revealing an airport-like logistical fatigue even before it had got off the ground: soprano Veronica Cangemi, cancelled; conductor Ivor Bolton, cancelled.

Enter stage left (or rather, up the asile) Bolton's replacement Timothy Brown. He happens to have prepared the professional chorus English Voices for this performance, so might have been the natural choice as a substitute conductor, and anyone who was lucky enough to hear his peaking turn-of-the-century choir at Clare College Cambridge will be aware of his outstanding gifts as a trainer of ultra-disciplined choirs. And he didn't disappoint here, either, maintaining watertight control of tempi and blend, even if some in the otherwise-perfect chorus attempted the odd crude breakout (yes, we know you're all aspiring soloists!).

If Brown's primary concern was the chorus, then the instrumentalists from Berlin's Akademie fur Alte Musik did nothing but support and inspire. Framed by Brown's tempi - which seemed as on-the-mark as those of Paul McCreesh - the instrumentalists phrased and shaped Handel's sequences and repeats with great beauty and understanding; 'da capos' were never labored, and there was interpretative invention in almost every bar. This is a period instrument ensemble without, it seems, the rough edges, whilst its Leader, the clearly inspiring Stephen Mai, seemed with his players to be grateful to Brown for a sensitive, democratic approach (there was no interfering in the shaping of the recitatives or accompagnatos here as with the Freiburgers the other week).

Of all the soloists, Joanne Lunn stunned the hall with Will the sun forget to streak, delivered with a poise and sensitivity that wasn't always on offer from the rest of the cast, whose curtain-call confusion was reflected musically in their occasional misunderstanding of the 'in-concert' format and a pot-pourri of comings and goings (why not just use six chairs?). Still, the younger singers had a master to learn from in the form of James Gilchrist, whose delivery is always clear and sensitive and never patronising: you don't need to walk slowly and haughtily onto the stage gazing skywards to create an atmosphere, you just need to perform well, unfortunately counter-tenor Timothy Mead did both when the latter would have sufficed. That said, you couldn't fault any performance vocally, give or take a period of settling into the wham-bam acoustic of St John's.

Apparent in this performance, and singularly lacking in some other similar promotions in London recently, was a sense of enjoyment and discovery. Is it the label of a 'festival' that does this? Is it the enthusiasm and focus of a conductor and his players? Is it the infectious momentum of Handel's music? It's probably when all these factors meet on a single co-ordinate, and that doesn't always happen. When the timpanist Friedhelm May urged his colleagues towards Handel's climaxes with his sharp rolls on 'authentic' sticks and drums, the excitement and anticipation were palpable and spine-tingling.   

Andrew Mellor