Most effective are the ballads and lighter, folksy numbers, where Mields's agile voice enchants...Purists may fgind the ensemble takes a few too many liberties, orchestrating these pieces wioth a battery of percussion, wind and stringed instruments, but there's no denying that it's all done with terrific style and bravura.

Mields has a fine, conventional voice for this kind of music - pure, pretty and with clear, largely correct English - and she enters into the spirit to the point of the odd deranged cackle, sob or moan...Ultimately they seem more like the kind of adaptations you might hear in a modern staging of a Restoration play than a reflection of the 17th-century sound world.