Sophie Yates - English Virginals Music (1995)

Sophie Yates follows her French and Iberian collections (11/93 and 11/94) with an English one, an overview of the period that ended in the 1620s after the death of Byrd, its central figure, Gibbons and Bull, though Tomkins delayed the stylistic rigor mortis for another 30 years. The anonymous My Lady Carey's Dompe and Aston's Hornepype provide quasi-improvisational precursors (though they are not so placed in the programme) of the ubiquitous divisions upon whatever, including Byrd's or Aston's Ground – he looked both backwards to Aston and sideways to Dowland and Harding in writing divisions on their works. We are in the world of Byrd, the genres in the development of which he played a major role, and the contemporary composers he influenced. Byrd's Fantasia in A minor (FWVB52) is one of his finest early works and, coupled with its Prelude (FWVB100), is an excellent choice, as is that by Gibbons.
Dowland's Lachrymae Pavan and Harding's Galliard are not thematically linked but Yates, noting their common key and adjacency in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (121 and 122), juxtaposes them; whether or not Tregian intended this, it works well here. Only Byrd's setting of Harding's Galliard lacks any other current recording, but duplications are unimportant in a programme that is as well conceived and executed as this one. Yates plays on a warm-toned virginals, a copy, broadly based on an Italian instrument c1600, tuned to an unequal temperament that lends spice to chromatic chords such as that in Byrd's Fantasia – at 0'10''. Her grasp of style is secure, her delivery always expressive – but never to excess, and her shaping of the fantasias is clear-sighted. I can do no less than welcome this admirably recorded album with the same enthusiasm with which LS greeted the others.