Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, said Congreve. A sick one, too, if Baroque composers are to be believed. EUBO’s finale to this year’s festival, Maladies and Melodies, brought us hypochondria (twice) and convalescence, among a wide variety of charms.

In truth, any music played to this standard would lift the lowest spirits. For it is a recurring miracle that this orchestra, whose personnel changes completely every year, seems to distil our continent’s highest levels of performance. The group also proved, again, the immense diversity of Baroque inspiration.

The rhythms of an Allegro from Zelenka’s Hypocondrie positively sprung off the page and there was equal relish in the piquant harmonies of a Locatelli pastorale, the finale of a concerto grosso. Biber’s Battalia was attacked with a discipline any commando would envy. Just as stunning (and written in the same year, 1673) was the positively jazzy syncopation in Charpentier’s suite to accompany Molière’s Le Malade Imaginaire.

For sheer virtuosity, an Albinoni concerto for two oboes took the laurels. One of a trailblazing two dozen he wrote, its allegros demanded and received sparkling interplay between Iris Desirée Balzereit and Robert De Bree, not forgetting the juicy discords of its slow movement.

But it was Muffat’s Convalescentia, effectively a suite and in a variety of tempos, contrasting woodwinds with strings, that best crystallized EUBO’s intoxicating esprit de corps. Christmas cheer indeed.