The music on this excellent Consort of Musicke CD focuses on the highly specialized repertory apparently first cultivated at the Ferrarese court of Alfonso d'Este—the Duke would seem to have had an unusual and highly personal penchant for the sound of concerted soprano voices. As the disc illustrates, however, demand for duets and trios for high female voices extended beyond that court and well into the Baroque. Anthony Rooley and The Consort of Musicke have chosen some of the most successful pieces in the genre from the late Renaissance through to the High Baroque and they are consistently and engagingly performed with much skill. To an extent the formula is cracked simply by the choice of the creme de la creme of early music sopranos: the voices of Emma Kirkby, Evelyn Tubb, Tessa Bonner and Deborah Roberts are so wonderfully clear and pure, and their intonation and ensemble so refined and exact, that the ear is instantaneously captivated by sheer beauty of sound.
Certainly, if the three ladies of Ferrara sounded anything like this, the Duke's idiosyncratic musical taste is perfectly comprehensible. But there is also some fine music-making at the core of these performances, with the kind of attention to detail and expressiveness we have come to expect from these experts much in evidence. The varied continuo line-up is another bonus, with the harp (played by Frances Kelly) providing additional colour to particular effect in Barbara Strozzi's Le tre grazie. My favourite items are: Luzzaschi's O dolcezz' amarissime d'amore which perfectly encapsulates the essence of the bitter-sweetness of love described in Guarini's poem; Strozzi's duet Canto di bella bocca with its rapid changes of emotion and ornate but flexible vocal lines; and the Alessandro Scarlatti—a tour de force of imaginative writing for the possibly unique combination of four sopranos and alto. Full of harmonic interest and plangent suspensions, this piece proves more effective than Il ciarlatano (attributed to Carissimi) described as ''a miniature music drama'' by Rooley, but then it too has a certain curiosity value. Overall this disc offers interesting repertory well recorded and in performances that will, for the most part, be hard to better.'