NICHOLAS KRAEMER, a leading exponent of early music, treated the audience to an intimate evening of music-making.

Leading from the harpsichord, he opened the evening with Bach’s Suite No 4 in D major. The work, one of the warhorses of the repertoire, is often beefed up with larger orchestral forces, but, with a small ensemble, as Bach had intended it, Kraemer pared the music to its basic components.

Head bobbing side to side with the beat, Kraemer summoned the entrance of instruments with a raised hand or a knowing nod. It was clean cut and lithe.

Sinfonia leader Bradley Creswick fronted Bach’s Violin Concerto in A Minor. An uncoiled spring of energy, he executed the contrapuntal passages with pinpoint precision, while conveying the work’s soaring slow movement with graceful ease.

The first half of the evening was rounded off with Bach’s Concerto Movement for Violin, a rarity that has had music scholars baffled. It wasn’t completed, but Kraemer assured the audience he had “found a way of finishing it without you noticing”.

Next up was Sally Beamish’s Day Dawn. It is based on an old Shetland fiddle tune played at the winter solstice to mark the dawn of the lengthening of the day.

Opening in a sea of calm, the work evokes slivers of sunlight growing on the horizon and building in strength as the work becomes more frenetic. The refreshing rendition won the seal of approval from the audience, as well as the composer, who was on hand to receive applause.

Building on the theme of new beginnings, the evening concluded with Haydn’s Symphony No 6 in D Le Matin (Morning), delivered with unadorned clarity.