Recorder players will doubtless clamour for this recording. Marion Verbruggen's recital with Trio Sonnerie is just the sort they would like to emulate; the choice of repertory is nicely spread in time and origin, which the musicians point up by using different period instruments. Verbruggen is an excellent technician who plays with style and breadth. But the precision and decisiveness of her virtuosity, particularly in the Fontana sonata and the Bassano diminutions on secular vocal music by Clemens non Papa and Cipriano de Rore borders on flippancy. Mitzi Meyerson accompanies sympathetically, joined by Sarah Cunningham in the Fontana and the Marais, but because the engineers have concentrated on capturing the clarity of the recorder the tonequalities of the accompanying instruments (particularly the viol in the Fontana sonata) have been compromised.
They perform about half of the Couplets de Folie by the viol player Marin Marais (who encouraged recorder players and others to transcribe them), but given the collaboration with Sarah Cunningham, Verbruggen might well have shared out the variations, in only one, characterized by sustained suspensions, do they approach a trio texture (though Marais did provide occasional diminutions in the continuo part for a bowed bass). It is equally appropriate to have purloined the Bach sonatas. However, in this performance the quick movements are perky but mechanical and there is a real want of feeling in the slow movements: more to the point, these performances as a whole lack the necessary spirit to catapult good playing into the realm of inspiration.'