This disc is as beautifully played as you are entitled to expect from a soloist and ensemble drawn from the Berlin Philharmonic. Of the six works by composers born or active in or around Naples, only two - Bellini's sweet little Oboe Concerto and a previously unrecorded concerto by Hasse - are original works, while the rest are arrangements or orchestrations. The "concertos" by Scarlatti and Cimarosa are adaptations of grouped one-movement keyboard sonatas, throwing up a couple of delightful slow movements (Scarlatti's yearning K208 and a scrumptious Andante from Cimarosa) but missing perhaps the kind of dramatic opposition between soloist and band that a true concerto tends to demand. But then, with the emphasis on sun-soaked Neapolitan melody, that is presumably not the point of the exercise.

A more pressing purpose still, of course, is to showcase the blissful playing of Christoph Hartmann, and indeed one only has to listen for a short while to be thankful that he has found such congenial vehicles for achieving it. His lyrical poise and creamy tone are shown in the bel canto of an Andante by Donizetti (whose incomplete piano accompaniment has been completed and arranged for strings), and the almost dreamy touch of his silky-fleet virtuosity in a concluding Neapolitan reminiscence by Antonio Pasculli, the 19th-century Sicilian oboist to whom he has already dedicated an entire disc. The single-string accompaniments of Ensemble Berlin are expertly played - boldly "un-Baroque" in the 18th-century half of the programme, warmly supportive in the Romantic half - and the recording is of exemplary clarity. Uncomplicated music delivered with high-level skill; this is a disc for simple enjoyment.

- Lindsay Kemp, Gramophone