This is a very engaging and well-constructed programme, containing some better-known pieces, but concentrating for the most part on Italian dance music: a pavan, a tarantella, a chaconne, a follia, to name only four. Some of the most refreshing selections are to be found among the 12 minutes’ worth of dances from Zanetti’s Il scolaro: the sound of two violins playing the top line in a string consort is extraordinarily evocative, and on this recording one readily understands why such string bands caught on so rapidly. The ensemble conveys such spontaneity that even the arranged pieces – such as Sances’s Lagrimosa belta – sound as though they were written specially for it. One of these, the tarantella based upon a stock ostinato, is actually credited to David Douglass himself (though the insert-notes seem to imply, paradoxically, that an improvised performance is aimed at). Only the Gesualdo madrigals – performed, again, with just strings – seem to not quite fit the medium, despite the superb polish of the performances; perhaps I was expecting diminutions, if such things are possible in a piece so convolutedly chromatic as Moro, lasso, al mio duolo. The individual contributions are impressive too: Andrew Lawrence-King and Paul O’Dette each boast very effective solos, and Ellen Hargis is persuasive as always, especially in the livelier pieces, where her richness and flexibility of tone are most impressively combined.
The King’s Noyse set great store by the improvisatory, spontaneous character of the early Italian baroque, and by the flexibility with which music could be adapted to suit given ensembles. This disc bears out such notions, and also feeds the hope that they might push them further still in future. Many would argue that the word ‘authenticity’ is now best left alone; but if one wishes to define it – one of many possible definitions – as facilitating the suspension of disbelief (the illusion of actually ‘being there’), then the King’s Noyse succeed brilliantly.'