Soprano Kate Macoboy and lutenist Robert Meunier again join forces on this recording to present music from the Italian Renaissance. We are perhaps more familiar with Northern European composers working in Italy in the decades before and after 1500 than we are with Italian composers from the same period.

Names such as Josquin des Prez, Alexander Agricola, Loyset Compere and Jacob Obrecht were masters of liturgical polyphony, masses and motets. Their art could be heard in monasteries, cathedral chapels, papal and some princely chapels.

However, when it comes to secular music, Italian composers and musicians were in demand the most, from papal employment in Rome and the northern courts of Mantua and Ferrara to the merchant houses on the Grand Canal in Venice. Singer/lutenists such as Bartolomeo Tromboncino, Marchetto Cara and Michele Pesenti as well as lutenists Marco dall’Aquila and Francesco da Milano were household names in these centres.

Lauded by the critics as ‘Really high quality’ (Gramophone Magazine); “Very well executed... a quality performance” (BBC Arts Online), Macoboy and Meunier themselves say of this recording: “Paradoxically, we characterise the songs to twenty-first century audiences by going back to the Renaissance itself. Like the great artists of the time, the musicians found inspiration in antiquity, and sought to recapture the legendary power of ancient Greek music to arouse human passions. That emotional power can indeed be experienced in these composers’ own music - but only if it is performed in the style in which it was performed in their own time. By drawing on little-known Renaissance sources on performance practice, we give their songs something of their original force and freshness.”