The lyricism and novel sound world suggest moments on Ralph Towner and Paolo Fresu’s 2008 album ‘Chiaroscuro’ (ECM). The fragility and tenderness, maybe Chet Baker singing ‘My funny Valentine’. Then you watch the ‘official videos’. Eileen, an exquisite short film by Sue Healey featuring the 107-year-old dancer Eileen Kramer. The grungier Cold Song (Purcell as you’ve never heard him before, replete with reverb), featuring a considerably younger dancer this time, Jana Gatt. And you wish you never knew what a lute was. Or a clarinet, for that matter. Because the historical and stylistic associations only get in the way. You just want to be in a dimly lit club or small bar, in the days when they were still smoky, drinking whiskey and listening to the almost painfully intimate utterances of these two young musicians.

Clarinettist David Orlowsky and lutenist David Bergmüller have extensive ‘mainstream’ classical careers outside this duo. But nothing like this. Their original compositions – Eileen, Ada, Serendipity – are soulful, direct; their arrangements of Purcell, Dowland, Thomas Preston and Kapsberger are imaginative and enhanced by anachronistic extemporisations. But it makes no sense to talk about time, outside of rhythm. It’s as though Orlowsky’s sound is literally supported by the lute’s, so subtle, so sensitive, so hypnotic is the playing.

If you listen to just one track, try Mighty Powers, an arrangement of Purcell’s ‘They tell us that your mighty powers above’ from The Indian Queen. Here Orlowsky and Bergmüller brilliantly unite the folk song-like qualities of Purcell’s melodic line with a continuo colouring while delightfully confounding all expectations.

‘Alter ego’. Two bodies, one breath. What a gift, what a surprise this release is.