John Rutter’s Cambridge Singers bring consistent unanimity of ensemble and a natural expressive feeling to this very attractive program of madrigals. Perhaps the first group, devoted to love and marriage, may be thought rather too consistently mellifluous; but the second, ‘Madrigals of times and season’, is nicely contrasted, with the clean articulation of Morley’s Now is the month of Maying made the more telling by the lightness of the vocal production. John Wilbye’s lovely Draw on sweet night, which follows, makes a perfect contrast. After two items about ‘Fairies, spirits and conceits’, the concert closes in a mood of moving Elizabethan melancholy with a group devoted to mourning and farewell. Superb recording in a most flattering acoustic makes this collection the more enjoyable, though one to be dipped into rather than heard all at once.
