Briefly, Hyperion have done it again. With the courage and imagination that we are almost beginning to expect from them, they bring us a new ensemble with a new sound and a different approach to the performance of medieval music. What distinguishes the performances of Sinfonye is that they so successfully incorporate the 'folk' sound into early monophony. It is perhaps most obvious in Stevie Wishart's fiddle playing: she follows current opinions that the medieval fiddle was essentially a drone instrument, rarely playing fewer than two strings at a time; but she plays with absolute and riveting freedom, as she does also on the hurdy-gurdy. Jim Denley on the drums (specifically the north Spanish pandeiro and the Moroccan bendir) provides a similarly fresh colour. And, quite suddenly, Andrew Lawrence-King with his magic harp has become ubiquitous in recordings of medieval music, spinning new and technically dazzling sounds if occasionally allowing his imagination to run further than seems comfortable.
But along with this, there is Mara Kiek, a singer of apparently Balkan extraction who has a range of sounds and articulation equalled by no singer since Jantina Noorman. In Martin Codax's cycle of songs she brings out what used to be called Noorrnan's barched roof' sound, wonderfully appropriate for these astonishingly atmospheric thirteenth-century Galician songs. But elsewhere she shows many different sounds, through to an extraordinarily pure tone. Since direct comparison is almost inevitable, it has to be said that Kiek does not yet have all the control of pitch and words that helped to make Jantina Noorman so astonishing. But she is well on the way; and we must look forward to more from her.
So that leaves me very little space to comment on the music. Most of the songs are from the large medieval repertory written from the woman's point of view. And although most of the music has been recorded before there is an admirable quality not only in its juxtaposition and in the preparation of the transcriptions but also in the way it is presented in the sleeve-note. This is a debut that promises extremely well for the future.'