Forty years after its foundation and after more than 300 CD releases, the period instrument Academy of Ancient Music has set up its own label. This is the first release. Standards are crisp, spirited, full of imaginative detail with fizzing harpsichord contributions from the AAM's music director, Richard Egarr. Spanning Handel to Haydn, it traces the enthusiasm for a new form – the symphony – among 18th-century composers. I listened "blind". Each example sounded more engaging, more deeply expressive, than the last. Suddenly we seemed to have arrived. The work which spoke so clearly was Haydn's Symphony No 49 in F minor, "La passione". Since Haydn has always been considered the father of the symphony, the disc had done its job well.