A quiet companionable record, reflective company for a fireside evening: an Elizabethan anthology, partly to words, partly instrumental, with ballad tunes dating further back to the older world which music so often evokes in Shakespeare's plays. The ''old thing'' poignantly recalled by Desdemona, the song of the poor soul ''sighing by a sycamore tree'', is one of the most haunting, sung feelingly here by David Cordier with a sympathetic and not over-indulgent slowing in the last verse. Most, in fact, are sad tunes, or seem so to us. Anon's Daphne may possibly have been quite a jolly melody but here given by the solo flute it has a lonely, melancholy flavour; none the less lovely for that.
The programme is attractively arranged and plays as a more or less unbroken sequence. It opens with the song from which it takes its title, My mind to me a kingdom is, words attributed to Sir Edward Dyer, though I believe no longer thought to be his. Harp and lute take over as soloists from the voice from time to time, and probably the finest music of all is Dowland's Lachrimae to the Consort in an arrangement by Morley which replaces viols with the more modern-sounding violin and viola da gamba. Byrd's Lullaby follows as the most finely wrought of the songs, and again Cordier is able to colour his expression movingly in the lament. The supple syncopations of Morley's dance tune, Joyne hands, is well placed to brighten the mood: a stylish, deft performance too. The resourcefulness of a good lutenist is delightfully evident in Stephen Stubbs's playing of Go from my window, and the final item brings the sound which will probably stay longest in the memory, that of the Irish harp tolling what was formerly thought to be Anne Boleyn's knell in O Deathe, rocke me asleep. Cordier's pure, unforced tone is gratefully heard, and the interesting group of players acquit themselves well in a programme which admirably suits their interesting name.'