Search - Richard Alison, Daniel Bacheler, William Byrd :: Fantasies, Ayres and Dances - Elizabethan and Jacobean Consort Music

If you had to reduce your recordings of 16th-century instrumental music to only one disc (a horrendous thought!), you'd do very well to keep this one. Rarely is any recording of any repertoire so well conceived, programmed, and performed--and rarely is the music so consistently and incredibly beautiful. The age in which this music was created may have been infinitely different from ours, but we dearly need music with such sincerity and heart these days. Lutenist Julian Bream and his period-instrument ensemble draw us into an enchanting world of beautiful, sometimes heartbreaking melodies and lovely harmonies. Occasionally we hear a lively dance, and a few times we hear Robert Tear's plaintive tenor. But mostly it's the viols, Renaissance flute, cittern, and lute performing some of the finest examples of English Renaissance music we're ever likely to hear. --David Vernier