The period-instrument ensemble Collegium Musicum 90 has thus far released sixty-nine recordings, all exclusively for Chandos Records, forty of which are under the leadership of soloist, concertmaster and musical director Simon Standage – the doyen of so-called baroque violinists in Britain. Maestro Corelli's Violins is their latest project for Chandos's early-music label Chaconne. Notwithstanding its commercially appealing title, the recording has little to do with the famous Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713). It offers instead a small selection of concertos by a later generation of more obscure violinist-composers active in Rome during Corelli's last years and for several decades after his death: three works (Nos 2, 6 and 7) from Antonio Montanari's (1676–1737) Concerti Op. 1 (Amsterdam, c1731); two works (Nos 11 and 12) from Giovanni Mossi's (c1680–1742) Concerti Op. 4 (Amsterdam, 1727); and a single work (No. 11) from Giuseppe Valentini's (1681–1753) Concerti grossi Op. 7 (Bologna, 1710).

All concertos but Mossi's No. 12 are scored for four violins, cello and thoroughbass; Montanari's and Valentini's concertos also include a viola part, and Mossi's No. 12 has eight rather than four violin parts. Consistent with the well-known theories of musicologist Richard Maunder – editor of the scores and author of the liner notes – all pieces are performed one-to-a-part (that is, without any doublings); the individual parts are supported by a basso-continuo group comprising a harpsichord, an archlute and a violone grosso. (Unfortunately, some of these important details of scoring are either missing or mistaken on the record company's website.) The tuning is the common A=415 Hz, but, curiously, a tuning recipe – ‘fifths tuned narrow until the thirds sound good’ – is given in lieu of any specific temperament.

In this age of streaming and downloading, the producers should be praised for the effort they have put into designing the disc. The colour scheme is devised in such a way that it matches the musicians’ photos with the late seventeenth-century engraving, familiar to Corelli experts, that is imaginatively used for both the cover of the twenty-eight-page booklet and the inlay card of the CD. The engraving, now in the National Library of Sweden, is also reproduced in its entirety in the booklet: it shows Corelli at the head of an orchestra during a serenata that took place in Rome, in the Piazza di Spagna, in 1687. The liner notes are in English with German and French translations. Whilst well-written and informative, they hardly make a plea for the appropriateness of the project title, apart from noting that Montanari, Mossi and Valentini performed with Corelli at the premiere of George Frideric Handel's oratorio La Resurrezione in Rome on 8 April 1708 (but not in the aforementioned 1687 serenata, when they would have been too young).

The editors at Chandos Records are less cautious than Maunder. We read on the label's website:

Like so many of their kind, these sweeping claims prove flawed as soon as they are tested against the available historical evidence. First, we do not really know whether Montanari, Mossi and Valentini ever studied with Corelli; and second, we know next to nothing about Corelli's style of execution (and it remains in any case to be proven that it differed from that of his contemporaries). As for the compositional manner, except for very few movements, perhaps, none of the works recorded sounds especially Corellian. In fact, according to Maunder, with Valentini ‘we are a long way from the suave, polished style of Corelli’ (9). And even if we concede that ‘It would not be much of an exaggeration to claim that Mossi's Op. 4 concertos stand in the direct line from Corelli's Op. 6 to Handel's Op. 6’, Montanari's concertos Nos 6 and 7, ‘are particularly original works, which ought to be ranked among the most interesting from the whole Italian baroque period’ (10).

This is effectively a concert programme – and a fine one at that – turned into a recording programme, and I would imagine that is how it all started. The title is catchy, but the connection with Corelli is slim. (Incidentally, why maestro? At the time in Italy an established instrumentalist would have been called professore and an instrumental leader capo (degli strumentisti). Maestro was more commonly used for a choirmaster (maestro di cappella), and only in the nineteenth century was it bestowed on the most renowned musicians, primarily opera composers and, later on, conductors as well.) In addition, Valentini is underrepresented on this disc, and the piece chosen has already been recorded at least three times – an odd concentration given that there is such a large output to choose from. A more coherent programme would have possibly resulted from either a focus on the much-neglected figure of Mossi alone or, alternatively, on the pair Montanari–Mossi that so nicely illustrates the varied nature of Roman instrumental ensemble music of the first half of the eighteenth century. At any rate, in this particular field, attempts at genealogies are bound to fail, for the majority of sets of concertos, including Corelli's Op. 6 and Handel's Op. 6, are idiosyncratic and often peculiar even within the context of their composer's output.

One obvious counterargument is, of course, that the issues I raise here are the concern of scholars, not of recording artists and producers. And yet, leaving aside that the readers of the present journal are likely to be scholars, not recording artists or producers, the fact remains that matters are not so simple for historically informed performers. In the long-standing tradition of the ancient rhetoricians who inspired the great musicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, contemporary early-music practitioners must also try to achieve the threefold aim of rhetoric – to delight, instruct and persuade at once – lest they make no difference whatsoever to our understanding of past musical cultures (in which case they may as well start recording Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor over and over again, though on period instruments).

As for the musical interpretation itself, Simon Standage and his accomplished colleagues fall neatly into what, at least in Britain, may be called the ‘historically informed mainstream’ established by Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert, and by Christopher Hogwood and The Academy of Ancient Music, in the 1970s. Precision, accuracy, togetherness, drive, verve, composure, moderation are the key aesthetic desiderata. If you abide by them, you will not be disappointed. If you are up for variety and nuance, however, you may want to look elsewhere. Standage seems to pay little attention to the differences between the tempos, both overall and within the individual pieces. For instance, the three slow movements (Largo, Grave and Adagio) of the Valentini concerto are all performed roughly at the same speed and, more importantly, with much the same character. By contrast, other recordings of the same piece – Chiara Banchini with Ensemble 415 (Zig Zag 20801, 2007) or Reinhard Goebel with Musica Antiqua Köln (Deutsche Gramophon 0289 477 6728 2, 2008) – offer a wider and, for the present reviewer, more persuasive range of affects achieved not only through changes of speed but also through improvisation and dynamics. Whether unwittingly or not, playing always at the most comfortable tempo may also result in a lack of structural clarity. A case in point is the first composite movement of Montanari's No. 6, where, in Standage's rendition, one can hardly tell apart the three emphatic tutti sections (Adagio) from the two flowing solo sections (Andante). In the following movement (Allegro), the problem relates not so much to tempo as to the uniform, on-the-string bow stroke used for the fugal subject throughout – a sort of lighter martelé that makes down- and upbows barely distinguishable from one another. Whilst consistent, the effect is nevertheless monochromatic. One is reminded of those glorious string ensembles – I Musici, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields – which, back in the 1950s, revived eighteenth-century music on modern rather than period instruments yet, in so doing, prioritized energy over flexibility.