Susanne Heinrich’s first solo release for Hyperion was a deliciously atmsopheric award-winning disc of music by Abel. She continues her exploration of the world of the viol with this fascinating selection of works by the English composer Tobias Hume. Hume is a paradoxical figure: sometime mercenary solider and popularly described as a dilettante, the suggestive titles of some of these pieces reinforce that picture a picture that is belied by the music itself. Many of these works show a deep understanding of pure, translucent emotion, as if to take a magnifying glass straight to the core of one’s feelings. A sense of melancholy and sadness, enhanced by Heinrich’s sympathetic playing, entices the listener into a world of dark enchantment.

'Heinrich's style is attractively grainy in tone and plaintive in manner, with a more pervasive melancholy than Jordi Savall sought out in his Hume collection of 2004' (The Irish Times)

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Recording details: April 2009; St Andrew's Church, Toddington, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom; Produced by Adrian Hunter; Engineered by Adrian Hunter; Release date: March 2010;