With its airy atmosphere enhanced by an artwork display of angels, St Michael’s, Summertown, was just the place for Mauro Giuliani’s Grande Overture – the first work in Manus Noble’s intriguing guitar recital. Giuliani composed more than 200 guitar works, and is believed to have played, as a cellist, in the first performance of Beethoven’s 7th symphony. Little sign of Beethoven in this transparent, gentle music, however, which demonstrated Noble’s delicate, detailed finger work, and his ability to make the guitar sing a melody.

After Giuliani, three more composers well worth an airing – Yocoh, Ryan, and Ginastera. Yocoh, born in 1925, was represented by his theme and variations on Sakura, a Japanese folksong on the subject of cherry blossoms. In a fascinating introduction featuring a Chinese 21-string guzheng, Noble demonstrated the difficulties of ‘bending’ notes in an oriental style, but nonetheless he conjured up a very ethereal and graceful Japanese sound picture.

“You usually associate the strains and squeaks you’re going to hear now with bad technique,” Noble told us before Gary Ryan’s Scenes from Brazil. The squeaks appeared to telling effect in a movement called “Junglescape”, where they represented insects homing in, while taps and thumps to various parts of the guitar suggested more mysterious jungle noises. Other movements evocated Sugarloaf Mountain, and Rio Bay – the latter taken up-tempo with a bossa nova rhythm. Noble reinforced his obvious enjoyment of modern guitar techniques in the final work, Alberto Ginastera’s Sonata. Here darting taps to the woodwork added a complete percussion section to the melodies coming from the strings. This hugely entertaining and accomplished recital ended with an anonymous, muscular encore that sounded as if it had leapt straight off the soundtrack of a Clint Eastwood film.