Just as composers of the Florentine Academy sought to recapture the supposed power and directness of ancient Greek music in their “new music”, so many of today’s period-performance bands seek to emulate the power and directness of jazz in their performances of “old music”. The Leupold Trio is clearly one of these.

Comprising members of the Combattimento Consort Amsterdam, the Leupold Trio here brings the role of the chitarrone as an effective continuo instrument to the fore while performing Italian Renaissance and Baroque sonatas featuring violin and/or cello. Two works for the Renaissance lute by Gregory Howet and John Dowland, stylishly performed by Sören Leupold, add further variety. The sonatas range in style from Frescobaldi’s Canzona No 4, which betrays its origin in Renaissance imitative writing, and a transitional work such as Giovanni Paolo Cima’s Sonata per il violino, through the new, monodic style of Dario Castello’s Sonata seconda of 1629 to the Baroque sonata da chiesa exemplified here by Vivaldi’s Sonata RV44 for solo cello.

Stressing the extempore and “live” qualities associated with jazz, the Leupold Trio focus on muscular phrasing, tight ensemble and a disciplined madness in respect of improvised ornamentation and harmonisation. Violinist Eva Stegeman may as well be blowing a sax, such is the relaxed exuberance of her playing in the Castello and in Corelli’s La follia Sonata. Cellist Wouter Mijnders’s combination of elegance and outrageousness in the Gabrielli and Vivaldi is a thing to behold, while Leupold’s propensity to break out into wild strumming where appropriate, such as in the first Allegro of the Vivaldi, adds an extra layer of delicious tension. I just can’t decide whether this is more Ornette Coleman than Bill Evans…