Markku Luolajan Mikkola

The most substantial pieces here are the set of variations of La folia, and the Tombeau pour M-deSte Colombe in memory of Marais's mentor. His idiom embodies a paradox that's peculiarly French, in that it demands a very high technical standard, yet its proper expression requires the utmost restraint. The young Finnish viol-player, Markku Luolajan-Mikkola, is a founder-member of Phantasm.

This is music from Norway, from Bergen specifically, written in the early eighteenth century. Composer Georg von Bertouch has an interesting biography; a German-born musician of French extraction, he was also a military leader who participated in 22 battles in Denmark (of which Norway was a part), Germany, and France. A bit older than Bach and Telemann, and geographically even farther removed from the fonts of Italian innovation, he did not (on the evidence of the music here) engage with Vivaldi or with Telemann's galant styles.

In this new recording Phantasm make no excuses for arranging some of Bach’s remarkable keyboard music for a consort of viols. Led by director Laurence Dreyfus they go on a conscious mission to uncover the hidden riches concealed behind the more neutral resources of the harpsichord and organ so as to liberate the fascinating characters lurking in the shadows and behind the scenes within Bach’s individual polyphonic lines. In the process of fugal confrontation among three to six musicians, they come face to face with the astounding psychological insights of Bach’s most radical inventions.

John Dowland's Lachrimae or Seven Tears is a series of seven instrumental pavans in five parts, based on the melody of his lute song, Flow, My Tears, followed by a collection of diverse dances. This famous book of chamber pieces is presented complete by the viol consort Phantasm, which is joined by lutenist Elizabeth Kenny, and their expert interpretations have the characteristic mix of poetic melancholy and courtly elegance that define Dowland's music.

William Lawes, who was shot and killed during the English Civil War, was the intellectual of English viol music in the 17th century, and the pieces heard here will appeal most to those whose interests run to the brainy and slighly shocking: Gesualdo, Zelenka, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. "Consorts to the organ" are viol consort pieces with the accompaniment of a small organ, which here blends almost imperceptibly into the texture only to emerge into unexpected short solos.