This season of concerts formulated by the music 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.

If ever a man played as if completely in love with his violin then it was Richard 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 consummate; 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.