Il Cembalo Transalpino

– Music from the

Fitzwilliam Collection

Works by Galeazzo, P Philips, Arresti, Colonna, Caccini & Frescobaldi

Sophie Yates (harpsichord)

Chandos CHAN 0819 65:16 mins

Some of the best known late-16th and early-17thcentury solo keyboard music is collected in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. In addition to the seven pieces which Sophie Yates has chosen from this anthology, she has selected others from disparate and slightly later sources from Amsterdam and

Rome. Later still, and sitting a little uncomfortably in the prevailing context, is an arrangement, possibly by the English organist and composer Thomas Roseingrave, of one of Corelli’s violin sonatas from his popular and immensely successful Op. 5.

It has been rightly said that virginals music can be played on any instrument that happens to be handy, though of course some pieces are better suited to one instrument than to another. Yates has chosen a single-manual Italian harpsichord, dating from the first half of the 17th century and housed in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. She has chosen well, for its distinctive sound beautifully assists the linear clarity of the music, especially rewarding in the pieces by Peter Philips and Domenico Zipoli, as well as preserving something of the characteristic warmth of a virginals. All-in-all this is a fascinating musical journey, clearly and elegantly signposted by Yates’s accompanying notes, in which she provides both a useful historical background and, where possible, a lucid exegesis of structural content.

Readers who already possess recordings of pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book need not be deterred, since Yates in her fluently stylish recital has chosen repertoire well off the beaten track. No Farnaby, no Byrd… Nicholas Anderson PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★