This is the third and final instalment of the Well-Tempered Consort series (5 Diapasons, Gramophone Editor’s Choice, BBC Music Magazine Chamber Choice). In this programme devised by its director Laurence Dreyfus, the viol consort Phantasm continues to shine new light on the fugues from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier interspersed with some of the composer’s most harmonically adventurous experiments from the Clavierübung III. This polyphonic feast also includes two works from the Inventions and Sinfonias as well as the Fantasia in G major BWV 572, or Pièce d’orgue as it is sometimes called, which boasts an extraordinary closing pedal point. A fitting end to a remarkable journey!

The music of William Byrd has been something of an obsession for the members of Phantasm, featuring on their early recordings Still Music of the Spheres (1996) and Byrd Song (1998), as well as their 2004 collection The Four Temperaments. Here they return again to the Elizabethan composer with the benefit of nearly two decades’ performing experience, to gather together his complete output for viol consort, bar the fragmentary or spurious works. Spanning some 40 years of Byrd’s life, this is a condense but subtly varied album of styles: courtly dances interleave with cryptic spiritual and devotional works – fleeting expressions of the recusant Catholic’s unwavering faith – and variations on popular Tudor songs, like the magnificent tour de force, Browning. Among the finest works are the Fantasias, which range from lush-textured six-part tapestries to the laconic three-part pieces, haiku-like in their poetic expressivity. Throughout them Byrd retains the ‘Angelicall and Divine’ qualities that his contemporaries remarked upon – qualities that Phantasm captures perfectly in this collection.

The performances on this CD come as a revelation. William Byrd is a great and vivacious composer. Richard Mico is more than a museum novelty. I had some lingering doubts, based on earnest but amateurish performances heard in the past. Phantasm brings all the virtuosity of a major string quartet to these consort fantasies and pavanes: perfect tuning, incisiveness bow work, highly individuated phrasing, judiciously varied tempi and uses of rubato.

This is the second instalment in Phantasm’s series of recordings dedicated to the keyboard music of J. S. Bach. The first was named a Chamber Choice by BBC Music Magazine and Prise de son d’exception by Diapason. This new recording explores further riches from both volumes of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier arranged by director Laurence Dreyfus for viol consort. Reimaging Bach’s keyboard polyphony as consort music has the dual benefits of expanding Bach’s chamber oeuvre whilst also presenting these highly-cherished works as seemingly new, never before heard gems, ripe for discovery. Despite its pedagogical inception Bach’s musical imagination imbues the Well-Tempered Clavier with intellectually complex fugues and preludes bursting with dancing melodies. Phantasm offers a wealth of insights into these highly artistic works revealing sonorities and colours that are both dynamically expressive and revelatory.

In this new recording Phantasm make no excuses for arranging some of Bach’s remarkable keyboard music for a consort of viols. Led by director Laurence Dreyfus they go on a conscious mission to uncover the hidden riches concealed behind the more neutral resources of the harpsichord and organ so as to liberate the fascinating characters lurking in the shadows and behind the scenes within Bach’s individual polyphonic lines. In the process of fugal confrontation among three to six musicians, they come face to face with the astounding psychological insights of Bach’s most radical inventions.