Until the nineteenth century, Spanish music had been always something of a grey area, since the Renaissance and Baroque produced only a few notables who were mainly keyboard composers, such as Cabezon and Correa de Arauxo. Alessandro Scarlatti's later sonatas might also be viewed as Spanish music: certainly, they were written there and the music is as evocative of Spain as that of any later composer. Nowhere does this become more apparent than in music of the seventeenth century, and Chatham Baroque's latest offering from Dorian is a well-meaning attempt to redress the balance by providing a programme of pleasant, though fairly insubstantial, works for a Baroque trio, expanded here to include harp and percussion. I am not sure whether the inclusion of other instruments occurs primarily to convince the listener that Spanish music does have an independent voice or whether it is to divert the listener from the obviously strong Italianate traces that permeate just about every piece on the disc. Nevertheless, the use of castanets in an anonymous Çarabanda (track 2) or maracas in de Huete's Zarambeque Criollo are refreshing touches and, if nothing else, allow the listener to perceive their origins.

Overall, Chatham Baroque's playing is extraordinarily neat and tuning very precise; neither are easy to achieve on period instruments, but the sense of delicacy that pervades is somewhat infuriating - the performers rarely respond fully to the affekt of the music. Few risks are taken, speeds are very much the same throughout the disc and there seems to be little in the way of dynamic variance; the only place where it feels as though the players are enjoying themselves and fully responding to the music occurs in Falconieri's Folias (track 19), which unhappily also contains some rather dubious tuning. Nevertheless, the sacrifice is well worth it.

Insert notes are well written and informative, although slightly more information on the use of percussion in some tracks would be useful, if only to enlighten further 'purists' such as myself. On the whole the disc is well played, charming and excellently produced.

John Woodford