This season of concerts formulated by the centre’s new artistic director, James Slater, is becoming a year of superlatives.

And that, really, is the only accurate way to describe this unbelievably dynamic, energising performance by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, directed by Richard Tognetti. 

If ever a man played as if completely in love with his violin then it was Tognetti. Haydn’s Violin Concerto No 1 in C asks much of the soloist. Tognetti delivered with compound interest.

It is, I think, his first visit to the centre. It cannot be his last.

The clarity, artistry and effervescence of his playing was consumate; one particular cadenza, with crystal clear, perfectly pitched high notes was spell-binding.

And you could tell by the stillness before applause that it had washed into everyone’s soul: Unforgettable.

His playing in the adagio of the same piece showed another facet: It was seductive, haunting; ghostly almost.

Mozart’s Divertimento in F, one of his early pieces, set the tone of quality for the evening which continued through Mendelssohn’s string Symphony No 10 in B minor - played with a controlled jauntiness.

And, as if to show the evening was not all classical razzmatazz, Tognetti’s own arrangement of Grieg’s Poeme erotique, came as a brief island of calm.