Melodies that emerge from musical folk memory or jump off the printed page to lodge themselves in the listener’s mind: such ‘earworms’ are the raison d’être of this inventive album, effervescent and haunting by turn.
Rising talent Tabea Debus makes an immediate impression as she joins the roster of Delphian house artists, coaxing an astonishing spectrum of moods and timbres from an array of Renaissance and Baroque recorders. Equally astounding is the tightness and responsiveness of her interaction with gamba player Jonathan Rees and lutenist Alex McCartney, while solos for recorder alone bookend the programme chronologically with music from the fourteenth century and the twenty-first.