Despite a career spent largely in the service of the church, Orazio Vecchi's main interest as a composer was in the lighter styles of madrigal writing. Designed as a sequence of narrative pieces loosely grouped around some familiar aspect of social life, his so-called madrigal comedies are interesting not as one of the forerunners of opera (as is sometimes mistakenly claimed), but for their brilliance of characterization and variety of emotional expression achieved within a limited and compact style (none of the individual pieces lasts much more than four minutes). Two of them, including L'Amfiparnaso (the most popular in its day), are here tellingly performed in cleverly-paced and refreshingly brisk performances which bring out all the humour, realism and rustic vitality of Vecchi's characters. As Lelio puts it in the Prologue to L'Amfiparnaso, this is a ''spectacle that is understood by the mind into which it enters by the ears and not by the eyes'', a piece of theatre which is played out in the imagination rather than on the stage. Dominique Visse and the Clement Janequin Ensemble have seized the essential spirit of this conception with enthusiasm and discrimination and, with an admirable deftness of touch and a sympathetic understanding of Vecchi's richly descriptive style, bring off these wryly amusing miniatures with bravura. Full of the sounds and colours of Italy, this is perfect entertainment for an English winter evening.'