Tag: Baroque

Sophie Bevan, Mary Bevan, Benjamin Bevan SSB, London Early Opera, Bridget Cunningham
43:00
Signum Records SIGCD423

We had two reviews of this disc:

[dropcap]A[/dropcap] pleasant compilation, showcasing the considerable vocal talents of three of the Bevan family in works from the youthful Handel’s Italian years. The recently discovered Gloria opens the programme in fine style; Sophie Bevan has the agility to cope with the taxing semiquaver work in the fast movements, along with the tonal beauty to make the slower sections glow. (Incidentally, the Laudate Pueri quote in the ‘Quoniam tu solus’ might help convince those doubtful of the work’s Handelian authenticity.) The other substantial piece is the cantata Cuopre tal volta il cielo which Bridget Cunningham, in her excellent sleeve note, suggests may have been written for the Neapolitan Antonio Manna, the first Polifemo in Handel’s 1707 serenata. Benjamin Bevan throws off the work’s vocal gymnastics with much aplomb; try the splendid first aria, ‘Tuona, balena,’ and marvel! Arias from Agrippina and Il Trionfo del Tempo give Mary Bevan centre stage. ’Un pensiero nemico di pace,’ with its contrasting B section, is thrillingly done, while ‘Bel Piacere’ positively dances. The disc is (somewhat meagrely, at 43 minutes!) completed by the grand orchestral Passacaille from Rodrigo and the fine ‘Sonata for a Harpsichord with Double Keys,’ persuasively played by Bridget Cunningham.

With such fine interpreters, it would have been fascinating to explore, e. g., some of the many little-known continuo cantatas – perhaps for later in this series?

Alastair Harper

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he main items are the first and the last, starting with the Gloria for soprano, two violins and continuo, possibly inspired by a Telemann Kyrie and Gloria. The incompetence of the awareness of the pre-2001 scholars is shown in the first column of my edition, produced in time for the first performance in Huntingdon before the work’s official modern appearance. The music itself has not been formally accepted by Handel scholars (hence HWV deest) and seems to have fallen into anonymity; I can’t think when I last sold my edition! Sophie is well worth hearing, but not quite up to Emma Kirkby, the first to have recorded it. The cantata Cuopre tal volta il cielo (HWV 98) is for Bass, two violins and continuo. The first pair has a powerful accompanied recitative and aria in 6/8, the basic words being concerned with storm and thunder. The mood changes with a secco recitative followed by an aria which has an amazing variety with the four staves often having different simultaneous themes. Surprisingly, seeing that I’ve three different copies (Chrysander 52a p. 121, HHA V/3 p. 251 and Green Man’s HAN 1), I had no recollection of it.

The two instrumental items are the orchestral passacaglia from Rodrigo and a Sonata with double Keys in G (HWV 579), played by Bridget Cunningham. Agrippina used to be scorned, but “Bel piacere” (No. 45) has alternations of 3/8 and 2/4. “Un pensiero” (Il Trionfo…) is a lively aria with non-stop semiquavers on the violins, with only a rest in the B section. It’s a bit odd when the booklet comments on the two operas at length when there were just two isolated pieces and minimal remarks on the music. The Bevans were excellent – but I’m not clear whether the Benjamin Bevan is the youngest of a family of 14 or if that is the number of Bevans who have been professional singers since Maurice. Do check the price before you buy it: £12.00 is a very expensive 43 minutes!

Clifford Bartlett

The stars are from Alastair.

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His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts, Nicholas Mulroy tenor, Eamonn Dougan baritone, directed by Jamie Savan
60:00
SFZM0115

We’ve had two reviews of this CD:

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]f Gioseffo Guami is not a household name among EMR readers, then His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts certainly is and any new CD from them will be seized upon eagerly. This recording is no exception and if Guami is a name with which you are not familiar then you soon will be – this is a wonderfully performed CD of some splendid music, dating from the periods that spanned the composer’s apprenticeship under Willaert at San Marco in Venezia, and his colleagueship with Lassus in Bavaria where both the Gabrielis were serving, before a brief spell in his native Lucca. From here he was headhunted to be organist at San Marco in 1588. When neither he nor Giovanni Gabrieli was elected to the top job there on Zarlino’s death he returned to the cathedral at Lucca where he remained till his death in 1611. The cover design of the labyrinth on a pier at the entrance to the cathedral at Lucca is a nice act of homage to this Luchesina.

Much of the music, edited principally by Jamie Savan and a number of his Newcastle students, comes from Guami’s Sacrae Cantiones published in 1585 and his Canzonette alla francese of 1601, reprinted in 1612. Two highly ornamented Canzonas from Raverii’s 1608 collection suggest that the florid ornamentation in other canzonas may well be Guami’s work too: he was a keyboard player, and his improvisatory skills – hardly any published organ music by him survives – would have been an obvious source for such ornamentation. Particularly interesting is one canzona (L’Accorta – track 8) where the second ‘choir’ is given to the organ, whose shadowing and echo effects are delightful, but not entirely successful: this is due not to any lack of skill or musicianship on the part of Jan Waterfield, the group’s keyboard player, but because the organ used is a standard Klop continuo organ and lacks the sweet open principal tone that was the characteristic sound of the Italian organs of the late 16th century. The stopped pipes of the Klop don’t really match the splendid sound of the cornetts and sackbuts, though the ¼ comma meantone tuning is a treat. This is the only slight blemish in an otherwise perfect recording.

The essential group of HMSC is six players – three cornettists and three trombonists; to which an additional cornet and sackbut are added sometimes, together with a ducian and the organ. Many of the canzoni in the 1601 collection with their semi-descriptive titles are in two contrasting choirs with answering echo effects, the antecedents of Viadana’s canzoni which I remember transcribing from a set of partbooks in the Bodleian as an undergraduate. Nicholas Mulroy and Eamonn Dougan join the group for five of the motets (a sixth is performed instrumentally) and a duet, showing off the singers’ ability to sing in a true meantone temperament. In the concerted motets, the contrast between the cori spezzati is more one of pitch – a higher choir answered by a lower choir or vice versa. The pitch is A=466 Hz, and occasionally in the high end of his range the more soloistic Nicholas Mulroy sounds a little to singerly for my tastes in this essentially concerted music, though he is splendid as the only singer in In die tribulationis, where the sensitive phrasing of the instrumental playing reminds me of just why the cornett was prized as the instrument most akin to the human voice.

In this and in other more grave numbers – one canzona is actually called La Grave – the clean, perfectly tuned notes from the instruments – especially Stephen Saunders’ bass sackbut at the end of La Chiarina – are wonderful.

But in all the pieces, we are left marveling at the skill and musicianship of these fine singers and players in presenting us with this beautifully produced taster CD of a composer whose work is of the highest quality and who seems equally at home in vocal and instrumental music. This CD has rapidly become a companion on my journeys, as well as a landmark in how to listen and play together as a wind group in a way that entirely matches the best viol consorts. And just as the viols and voices combination seems the quintessential sound for Jacobean music in England, so this CD of Guami gives us a standard for performing not only music in Venice at the turn of the 16th to 17th centuries, but also for how we might perform the motets and masses of Lassus as well. I should like to hear these forces singing Gabrieli too.

You should all hear this wonderful music. Many pieces are quite short, and the whole CD with 19 tracks is only 61 minutes in length, but they repay frequent listening. Every detail from the tuning to the changes in tempo to preparing for the cadences is well prepared and beautifully executed. I hope there will be much more Guami to come: meanwhile buy this and give it to your friends.

David Stancliffe

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is an impressive collection of cornett and sackbutt music, with two singers and an organist (Jan Waterfield). I’m a little surprised that every piece has organ continuo, but I won’t complain. The main ensembleconsists of the six people on the inside cover, but there are three others (Gawain Glenton, Miguel Tantos Sevilliano and Keith McGowan). I happen to have been playing organ (not a proper one) recently and tried to vary between legato and detached styles, and added significat breaks. I hadn’t played a church organ for some 50 years until last July, but I treat organ continuo thus, avoiding pure legatos, and shaping the music through subtle breaks between notes. Jan Waterfield was so right that I didn’t really need to pay attention! This style strikes me as ideal for cornett/sackbut repertoires.

As for the music, it is very impressive. I think that an hour is a bit too much: I played it in two halves (an advantage when LPs made that easy!), and these 19 pieces definitely need a break. The players play the texted pieces as if they were singers. But the addition of two real singers didn’t give the effect I expected. They don’t contrast or merge with the players, and I reckon that they need a more forward style. I won’t make a point I sometimes make concerning elaborate cornett divisions, but GG appears in only two items, and these are brilliant. This is certainly a fine collection of music. Sections from two collections of his music are played here (from 1585 and 1601), also calling on three anthologies of the period. The layout of the texts in the booklet is odd: they are not numbered and are placed in the wrong order – 6 & 14, then 9, 1, 3, 19. In nearly every respect, though, this is a fine recording, worthy of Guami’s music.

Clifford Bartlett

theatrum affectuum
73:18
Aeolus AE-10226

[dropcap]A[/dropcap] most engaging and enjoyable issue. Nicola Matteis (c1644-49 – before 1695) is thought to have been Neapolitan in origin, but the music on this disc was published between 1682 and 1687 in London, and provides a fascinating snapshot of what was then fashionable there. There are echoes, as one would expect, of Italy – light-footed ‘fugas’ and suspension-laden ‘adagios’, but also French ‘correntes’ and even a ‘Pretty hard ground after the Scotch Humour.’ Purcell clearly knew his Matteis – there are echoes of the Scotch ground in the chorus “Come, Shepherds, lead up a lively measure” from King Arthur, for example.

Theatrum Affectuum have selected pieces from the various publications and grouped them into convincing ‘suites,’ as would no doubt have been usual at the time. In general they have scored them for recorder, violin and continuo, with the upper parts alternating – sometimes varying between alto and soprano recorder within individual ‘suites’, which is a little distracting. The playing is, however, uniformly superb, with breathtaking recorder runs from Andreas Bohlen and virtuoso violin double-stopping from Ayako Matsunaga, and extremely infectious rhythmic vitality; try the foot-tapping ‘Gavotte con divisioni’ from the fourth suite. Giangiacomo Pinardi’s guitar gets its chance to shine in the ‘Ayre’ of the first suite, and Pierre-Augustin Lay and Takashi Watanabe provide rock-steady continuo and lively ‘grounds’.

The disc also contains a couple of finely played Barsanti arrangements of Scots songs, though their mid-18th-century style sits a little uneasily with the rest of the programme. Andreas Bohlen’s sleevenotes are models of their kind – scholarly, well-written and most informative. Well worth exploring!

Alastair Harper

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L’Aura Rilucente
55:19
Ambronay AMY304
Handel: op. 2/5 & 7, arrangements of operatic pieces
Haym: op. 1/1, 3 & 4

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s far as I am aware, this is the first recording of music by Nicola Francesco Haym (1678-1729), better known today as the librettist for several of Handel’s greatest operas, including Giulio Cesare, Rodelinda and Tamerlano. He emerges as a charming, though small-scale, composer in his own right in these three trio sonatas; Heriberto Delgado Gutierrez and Sara Bagnati beautifully realise his plangent suspensions and deft counterpoint, splendidly supported by Silvia Serrano Monesterolo on cello, Jorge Lopez Escribano on keyboard, and particularly Maximilian Ehrhardt on harp.

The rest of the disc is devoted to Handel – unusual string arrangements of three operatic arias for voice and obbligato, which neatly demonstrate his differing techniques for vocal and instrumental composition, and two splendidly substantial trio sonatas from Op 2; No 7 in F has some extraordinary harmonic twists and a most dramatic conclusion to its fugal second movement and echoes of the overture to Athalia in its last. No 5 in G minor has a hectic, driving allegro and a contrastingly tranquil adagio. The disc concludes with the Ballo di Pastori e Pastorelli from Amadigi, which gives Ehrhardt’s harp a chance to shine.

A most enjoyable issue; one would however have liked a little more information about the music itself in the notes.

Alastair Harper

Cantus Cölln, Concerto Palatino, Konrad Junghänel
153:00 (2 CDs)
harmonia mundi HMG 501783.84

[dropcap]A[/dropcap] collection assembled – and in a number of cases, performed – by Johann Sebastian of works composed by the older members of the remarkable Bach family was recognised after his death as an important testament to J. S. B.’s reverence for his ancestors’ musical genius and came to be known as the Altbachisches Archiv before the end of the 18th century. Ending up in the Berlin Sing-Akademie library, the collection was first published in 1935, but went missing in the course of the 1939-45 war, re-emerging in Kiev. After being restored to Berlin at the end of the last century the pieces were worked on by Peter Wollny, a frequent author of Bach CD liner notes, whose essay here gives a detailed account of their contents as well as provenance.

Konrad Junghänel recorded them in 2002 with Cantus Cölln and Concerto Palatino, and these two CDs contain all the material in the Archiv together with a couple of additional motets by J. C. Bach (1642-1703), the most represented member of the ancestral clan, and the composer of the spacious 22 voice Michaelmas cantata where a choir of four trumpets and drums vies with two five voice vocal choirs and a string group of two violins and 4 violas, fagotto and continuo to represent the war in heaven which C. P. E. says his father performed in Leipzig to astonishing effect.

It is excellent to have the whole Archiv performed together, and with such fine singing and playing.The eleven singers are variously accompanied but the useful page detailing the exact instrumental and vocal registration of each piece is hidden in the middle of the substantial booklet; nor does this page follow the performing order given in the two title pages. And while we are given the scoring, we have no details of the actual instruments, pitch or temperament. But the substantial nine-page essay by Peter Wollny is given in French, English and German.

One gem among many is the last track of CD 1, a substantial wedding cantata by J. C. Bach, Mein Freundin, du bist schön, for which the parts are in the hand of Johann Ambrosius – the father of J. S. B. – which suggests that it may well have been performed at the marriage of J. C. B. in 1679. Much of the cantata is a dialogue between the lovers, and there is a long soprano aria over a ground bass where the accompanying instruments – a single violin, three violas with violone and continuo – perform remarkable ‘divisions’; this is followed by a chirpy fagotto obligato before a final gigue-like finale involving all the instruments, the voices of the choro and the four-part ripieno group.In other numbers, the inner parts in the string ensemble are often performed by a number of violas and sometimes violas da gamba, and frequently there is an independent fagotto part, as in J. S. B.’s cantata 150 or 131.But although these pieces illuminate the young J. S. B.’s technique and instrumentation as what we have come to know as ‘the orchestra’ was evolving out of the chori of different families of instruments and voices, they are nearly all fine compositions in their own right, and even the simpler motets for four voices or two four-part chori with organ (and sometimes cornetto and sackbuts) show us the range of styles that surrounded the growing J. S. B., and illuminates the background of his struggles with the church authorities in Leipzig to try and achieve groups of singers and players who could do justice to simpler homophonic and contrapuntal motets alongside the more adventurous demands of his cantatas and the Passions. Who, hearing these earlier pieces so convincingly performed with one voice or instrument to a part, could imagine the similarly scored Weimar cantatas sung or played in any other way?

So what happened in the Köthen and early Leipzig years to incline him to increase the number of (especially violin) players per part? And – the number of surviving singing parts notwithstanding – under what circumstances did he double or treble or even quadruple the number of voices per part with ripienisten, as the distinction in some later cantatas between solo and tutti as well as his desideratum in the famous Memorandum (Entwurf) of 1730 for a choir ‘pool’ of 12 or even 16 voices, suggests? For some of these motets, J. S. B. added doubling string and wind parts. There are questions that still need addressing, and this recording of the Altbachisches Archiv raises them sharply.

This is a finely performed and important collection: singers and players alike cultivate a clean and matching style, where each listens to the shaping of the other. No-one who is serious about learning how J. S. B.’s style of choral writing evolved from the time of Schütz through his distinguished ancestors can afford to miss this; and no-one can fail to enjoy these affective settings of texts that often have a personal – a wedding or a funeral – association; or even a family reunion, as in Georg Christoph’s cantata setting of Psalm 133, (CD 2.7) which Wollny convincingly argues was written for 16 September 1689, when G. C.’s twin brothers visited him in Schweinfurt to celebrate his birthday, joining their two tenor voices to his bass.

David Stancliffe

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Kei Koito (Volckland organ 1732/37, Cruciskirche, Erfurt)
70:53
Claves 50-1503

[dropcap]K[/dropcap]ei Koito plays this volume on the remarkable organ by Franciscus Volckland in Erfurt’s Cruciskirche. Built between 1732 and 1737, this instrument by one of Thuringia’s most noted builders is remarkable in several respects: first there are an unusual number of manual 8’ ranks – five on the Hauptwerk: Principal, Viola di Gamba, Gemshorn, Bordun and Traversiere, and three on the Brustwerke. There are only two reeds – a Vox Humana of considerable character and power, and a medium-powered but clear pedal Posaune. The lack of a manual chorus reed is amply compensated for by a rich Sesquialtera, and the Hauptwerk Mixtur is in the 16’ register and contains a third. The pedal has four 16’ ranks, with an 8’ and 4’ octave as its only upperwork, so she plays this mixture of preludes, fugues, trios, works classed as Anhang and transcriptions from cantatas and violin sonatas making frequent use of the pedal coupler and the large variety of string and flute tones – the Fughetta BWV 902 is particularly delightful on the 4’ Nachthorn on the Brustwerk.

It is impossible to elaborate the details of this interesting organ, so well suited to these pieces – some entirely unknown to me; but as well as a full specification of the organ, detailed registrations are given in the accompanying liner notes. The organ plays at a’=466 Hz and is tuned to Kirnberger II; it was restored by Alexander Schuke of Potsdam between 1999 and 2003, and some photographs and a description of the work he did would have been welcome. Jakob Adlung says in his 1768 treatise that Der Klang dieser Orgel ist unvergleichlich – ‘the sound of this organ is incomparable’, and it still is.

Kei Koito plays with clarity and finesse, using period fingerings and even lets us hear the Glockenspiel – as the Cymbelstern is called – sparingly in In dulci jubilo. An old friend of our family – a retired Major with all that the suggested stereotype implies – said of the blind organist Helmut Walcha (whose recordings on historic north-German instruments issued by DGG in the 1950s were a landmark in changing tastes) after hearing a recital of his on the then new organ in the Royal Festival Hall: ‘Absolutely spiffing; no smudge at all’; and I can do no better than echo his remark. This is a fascinating CD of some unfamiliar music played excellently on a remarkably suitable organ, and deserves to be known and enjoyed widely. This may be close to the aural picture that Bach had in mind than much of the Buxtehude north-German sound of the Schnitger organs that we often hear used for recording his organ music.

David Stancliffe

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Carolyn Sampson, Anke Vondung, Daniel Johannsen, Robias Berndt SATB, Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart, Freiburger Barockorchester, Hans-Christoph Rademann
115:58 (2 CDs); Deluxe edition also has DVD (38:32)
Carus 83.314 (2 CDs)
Carus 83.315 (Deluxe)

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is an important recording, as it uses the new Carus edition by Ulrich Leisinger. This edition has been in the making over a considerable time, and the text of the Missa is based on Bach’s autograph Dresden parts. Disentangling the various hands at work on the many revisions of the score of the complete work that passed into the care of C. P. E. Bach on his father’s death, where erasures, poor quality paper and fierce ink have wrought havoc and caused almost total loss of certain passages, has been a monumental task, only made possible by recent X-ray florescence analysis. From this recent analysis, it is evident that C. P. E. Bach made a number of alterations as well as corrections, and Uwe Wolf’s discussion with the conductor on the DVD as they look at the original leaves in Berlin raises the question of how to determine the best source – is that the original score, or is the more mature version in the parts, where J. S. B. clearly had further ideas as he wrote them out; or is it in the version edited up by C. P. E., which we have come to know as the authoritative text?

As well as them discussing the text, the DVD also gives interesting clips of Rademann rehearsing sections with the choir; swapping the position of the voices, trying out different tempi and figurations for the Sanctus and trying to get the singers understanding the flow of the vocal figures and the interchange between the voices. We also see him communing with nature in a Wordsworthian way, and the resulting performance which is fresh and fluid, as well as textually novel in places, is almost romantic in its approach: the complete performance of the opening Kyrie on the DVD reveals Rademann chasing interchanges, highlighting swirling counterpoint and caressing small details. As far as the text is concerned, the Domine Deus and Quoniam are the most obviously different, and are given in their well known versions at the end of the first CD, just as the 1724 SSSATB version of the Sanctus forms an appendix to the second. Most irritating to the listener are the very poorly managed hiccoughs between the movements that have links: the Quoniam to the Cum Sancto Spirito, the Confiteor to the Et expecto and the Sanctus to the Pleni sunt cæli.

But among all the discussion about the text, and the care taken over the details of the performance, this is still a performance in the choral society tradition. The full choir – 6 first Sops, 6 second Sops, 7 Alt, 6 Ten, 7 Bass making a total of 32 – sings everything: there is no dividing the choral scoring into different levels depending on the instrumental forces – or even any discussion of the possibility of doing so. You can tell from the traditional placing of the singers – ‘soloists’ out front, accompanied by the orchestra and chorus behind the players, singing with them – that this ‘choral society’ tradition is how the conductor conceives the work in spite of the up-to-date text. And the ‘soloists’ are just that: a ‘traditional’ SATB quartet, so that the alto doubles as the second soprano and the bass has to manage the low-range Quoniam as well as the baritone Et in Spiritum Sanctum. I no longer find this inequality between the choral sound and the single voice numbers convincing. Of the soloists, the bass is not quite right for either range, and is not really flexible enough for the detail of this music; the tenor, Daniel Johannsen, is light, fluent and a good match for the flute in the Benedictus and the Soprano in Domine Deus. The alto has to do dual duty, and is a soloist with accompaniment in the Agnus Dei rather than an equal partner with the violins. But if you want a choral society performance, this is a very good one: though a rather over-polished sound, with none of the raw excitement of Václav Luks with Collegium Vocale 1704 on ACC 24283 (reviewed in EMR December 2013) nor the clarity of the early OVPP version by Andrew Parrott.

The Freiburger Barockorchester (5.4.3.2.2 strings and single wind and brass with a sparkily played small organ) sound splendid: they are fluent and elastic when playing with the voices, but never lose their independent rhythmic impetus. My only query with them is the temperament: nothing is said in the glossy booklet, where a good bit of space is given to advertising Carus’ other productions, about which temperament is used or who made the instruments, but the trumpets clearly use finger holes even if the splendid horn player manages with handstopping.

Tempi are good, and the Sanctus – always a hall-mark for me – brisk, if not in the swinging 2 in a bar that was being tried out in some of the rehearsal clips. The balance and discipline of the choir are excellent, but the un-thought through nature of the choral scoring is shown up by the switch between the choir and the single bass in the Et iterum venturus est section of the Et resurrexit where his different tone and forward sound (the ‘soloists’ stand in front of the band with the choir behind) make an unbalanced contrast with the chorus. While the German material in the glossy booklet is translated into English, important questions about performance practice are left with no discussion: the booklet concentrates on the almost detective story-like establishment of the text and the usual biographical hagiography.

No-one who wrestles with the conundrum of Bach’s ‘great Catholic Mass’ as C. P. E. Bach called it should be without this version of the text and fail to study the Dresden parts, or the Carus score, when they consider the difficulties and obfuscations of the several facsimile scores that are now available. You will be enchanted by the singing of this choir and the playing of this band. But whether you will be convinced by all the stylistic solutions offered by Rademann’s performance, I rather doubt.

David Stancliffe

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English Renaissance Consort Music
Consortium5 recorder quintet
67:15
Resonus RES10155
Music by Jerome Bassano, Blankes, Brade, Byrd, Coperario, Dowland, Eglestone, Alfonso Ferrabosco I & II, Edward Gibbons, Holborne, Parsley, Parsons, Tye & Ward

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he title of this CD of English renaissance consort music is taken from a memorial wall-plaque in Norwich Cathedral to Osbert Parsley, composer of two of the 34 pieces on the disc, who died in 1585. Much of the music is associated with the court of Queen Elizabeth I and is usually for unspecified instruments, though Peter Holman speculates in his excellent notes on consort music in Elizabethan England that the three pieces by Bassano may well have been specifically written for recorders since the composer was a member of the court recorder consort for over fifty years. This Jerome (Geronimo) Bassano belonged to the second generation of the Bassano family which had moved in the 1530s from Venice to England where they became court musicians and recorder makers. It is a set of ten Bassano recorders made by Adriano Breukink which Consortium5 use to good effect in this recording. A whole CD of recorder music can leave one longing for a change of instrument but here the use of 4- and 8-foot pitch and the consort’s perfectly matched but varied articulation mean that the sound never becomes dull. The warm, mellow quality of the bigger instruments is particularly pleasing. The fact that 13 tracks are fantasias based on In Nomine might also lead to expectations of dullness but it’s surprising how great a variety of music can be based on this cantus firmus. There are more modern fantasias too, in a style derived from madrigals (rather than church music) which became fashionable around 1600. Most of the remaining pieces use dance forms and include a sprightly performance of Holborne’s Fairie-round and a set of well-known dances by Dowland.

Victoria Helby

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