La Senna Festeggiante - "the rejoicing Seine" - seems an odd name for a piece of music, especially one by a composer who had almost certainly never set foot in Paris. But Vivaldi was a man of his time, and personifying a river (portrayed by a singer) in a work honouring a visiting dignitary who lived on its banks was a common enough device in 18th-century Italy.

Little is certain about the circumstances of the work's composition, although at an educated guess it was written in homage to Louis XV. But it does contain several arias that show Vivaldi at his most descriptive, many of them recycled from earlier works, but all laced together with care. A pair of recorders provided the nightingale's haunting trills described by the soprano, Carolyn Sampson, in the first aria; the strings amply conjured up the river's waves in the second.

Robert King conducted his ensemble with spirit. The recorder players and oboists gave the melodies some fleet-footed decoration. Moments when the two baroque guitarists strummed their instruments up to a really loud rattle (and grinned impishly at each other afterwards) were all too brief.

The role of the Seine itself calls for a bass able to cover a remarkable range in pitch. Andrew Foster-Williams had the low notes in his grasp, yet could not give them quite the ripeness demanded by the music, which often descends pointedly to the depths. Hilary Summers was the mezzo representing Virtue; hers is a slightly hollow tone almost reminiscent of a good countertenor. She worked well in duet with Sampson, even though the two have very different voices. Cast as The Golden Age, the reliable Sampson seemed to be picking the notes, bright and pure, from the air.