There’s a whiff of Cervantes to the career of Sebastián Raval (d1604). As a soldier he was injured in battle before turning to the priesthood and to music, though seemingly without shedding his bellicose instincts: in Rome, then in Palermo, he challenged one composer after another to one-on-one competitions, which included improvising. (The forerunners of rap or turntable battles, such events were greatly enjoyed by contemporary audiences.) In these face-offs he was not especially successful in the estimation of the judges, let alone ‘the greatest musician in the world’, as he claimed. Hardly an attractive character, then; but neither was he the third-rate composer that music historians (writing much later) made him out to be.

Though born in Spain, Raval’s musical career took place in Italy, and this recital comprises a selection of canzonettas and instrumental ricercars. For what it’s worth, art here does not imitate life. You’ll listen in vain for anything especially bolshy or pugnacious, except in the technical challenges Raval sets himself in the ricercars, which combine and recombine several subjects simultaneously, or alter their rhythms in a number of ways (techniques that put him in the company of his Neapolitan contemporaries, finding an echo in early Frescobaldi). They’re easy enough to miss without the benefit of a score, but repeated listening teases the ear down some obsessive and mildly bizarre rabbit-holes. (There’s also a startling melodic clash in the ricercar with four subjects in the first mode.)

Raval’s canzonas reveal a different side to him, showcasing his fluency and his pleasant melodic gift. He really wasn’t the greatest musician in the world, but one can listen even to the most recondite of his fantasias with genuine pleasure. La Violondrina perform it with ease and spaciousness, and the Venezualan soprano Victoria Cassano is a sympathetic and gentle interpreter of the canzonas, though they might benefit (like ‘Ondeggivano a l’aura’) from greater urgency and variety of shading and mood. For all his braggadocio, Raval flatters the ear rather than conquering it.