Emma Kirkby's voice has no longer the ingenue air, the charmingly demure quality through which a hint of passion enticingly peeps, with which she delighted so many of us in her earlier recordings. It is now fuller, and used with less inhibition (or pretence of it); and that means that a wider repertory, not to say a wider interpretative range, is open to her. The virtues of taste and technique and impeccable tuning however remain, still supported by a prodigious musical intelligence and a natural feeling for early eighteenth-century style (among others). This disc casts her in music composed, for the most part, for one of the most celebrated English singers of that era, Cecilia Young, one of several talented singing sisters and for a time the wife of Thomas Arne—famed in her day for the ''sweetness and simplicity'' (Dibdin's words) of her singing and her character. The impersonation seems a convincing one, to judge by the result here, which is uniformly delightful.
Kirkby begins (after an appropriate and unfamiliar overture written by Handel for one of his pasticcios) with a couple of songs by Cecilia's brother-in-law, J. F. Lampe, one in a splendidly bold style, the other a graceful siciliana with some pretty warblings from the flute. Arne's ''Rise, Glory, rise'' is a big, fanfarish piece with trumpets and drums, of a kind we call Handelian but practised very effectively by others too. She does it in full voice and noble style. Then comes the main Handel group, including three opera arias (Cecilia sang for a while in Handel's Covent Garden company), a spirited piece for the mischievous Dalinda in Ariodante and two arias for Morgana, the enchantress's sister, in Alcina: the lovely ''Credete al mio dolore'', in which the cello obbligato is played with just the right measure of art and a light, translucent tone by Mark Caudle, and—finest of all, I would say— the great aria concluding Act 1 (and later appropriated by Handel for Alcina herself). Kirkby's new, richer, more expansive tone and manner bring it marvellously to life. ''Sweet bird'', with delicious interchanges and total unity of manner between Kirkby and Rachel Brown's flute, is another delight (the trilling is thrilling); while the Saul air is done with her characteristic clarity and point. Lastly, three songs by Arne, of which Ariel's ''Where the bee sucks,'' done with the most exquisite subtlety of rhythm and (as always) articulation, would alone be amply worth the price of this disc. Christopher Hogwood conducts in direct and unaffected fashion, and with a natural feeling for the gait of Handel's rhythms. Without a doubt, one of my discs of the year, and I am sure yours too.'