What should have been a thoroughly absorbing evening of baroque music was spoilt for me – and others, I sadly discovered in the interval – by almost inaudible announcements by the artists before various numbers.

I know the music centre has recently spent a lot of money on a sound system designed for speech, as opposed to music, and I have been told artists and entertainers have merely to ask if they want to use it. So why didn’t they?

Pre-item announcements must have been interesting, even amusing, judging by the reactions of the front two thirds of the audience. But what about the rest; where, in fact, I was sitting? I almost felt like standing up and shouting ‘Speak up!’ But the rest of the evening was musically highly rewarding. A wooden, key-less flute, played so lovingly by Florilegium director Ashley Solomon, had a haunting, breathy sound in the centre’s enviable acoustic.

Telemann, CPE and JS Bach are the bread and butter of this wondrous group but relatively rarely performed gems from Marais and, particularly, Rebel’s enchanting Les Caracteres de la Danse, just showed how lively and beguiling some of this period stuff can be. Florilegium in modern Latin is bouquet; more audible announcements would have brought this concert into flower.