Both these releases from Hespèrion XXI are revisitings of repertoire they have explored before, but in neither is there the slightest whiff of rehash; both are as fresh as you could wish. This is especially so in the case of ‘Bailar Cantando’, which presents the 20 pieces that are the entire musical content of the Codex Trujillo, a massive nine-volume report on the customs and lifestyles of the mestizo (or mixed-race) peoples of the colonial Peruvian city of Trujillo, compiled in the 1780s on the order of the local (Spanish) bishop. Jordi Savall first encountered this fascinating manuscript many years ago but it was only after meeting the musicians of the Mexico-based Tembembe Ensamble Continuo in 2006 that he felt ready to include two of its pieces on ‘Folías Criollas’ (A/10), and only now that he has tackled the entire collection, enlisting Tembembe’s support again to help him ‘guarantee the works’ essential spirit and style, which is both popular and refined, historical and yet very much alive in the present’.

There’s no denying that, or that the experiment has worked. No one listening to these sweetly elegant pieces would bother themselves with their historical context for long, so winning is their timeless South American spirit – a benign mixture of Spanish, Amerindian and African aesthetics. To melodies simple in contour and harmony but deliciously complex in rhythm, the lyrics (mainly in Spanish, but also in indigenous tongues such as Quechuan or Mochica) sing of the pains of love, rail against the harshness of the pressgang, obliquely recall the execution by the Spanish of the last Inca king, celebrate the baby Jesus or solemnly honour the Mother of God. Savall’s orchestrations draw from the manuscript’s watercolour illustrations (some of which are reproduced in the booklet), and mix bowed and plucked strings (Andrew Lawrence-King’s harp making many telling contributions) with winds that encompass fruity dulcian and cackling cornett, and percussion that includes an effectively used horse’s jawbone. They sound just the part, as does the stylish singing, and although there isn’t any dancing it certainly isn’t hard to visualise some. The audience reaction has been edited out of this concert recording but it all sounds like a gently joyous occasion, like some long-remembered summer night under the stars. Irresistible.

‘Musica Nova’ takes its title from a collection of ricercars published in Venice in 1540, even though only one of the pieces here (a delicately churchy Ricercare by Hieronimus Parabosco) comes from it. Instead the disc explores the concept of a ‘new music’ which – whether with origins in either vocal polyphony or dance music – was to be put in the hands of serious instrumental ensembles such as the consort of viols. What is more, Savall follows the idea beyond the expected consort repertoire of Dowland and Gibbons or the solemn dances of Scheidt, sidelines the arrival of the less polyphonically conceived genres of the Baroque and takes things up as far as the end of the 17th century, where we find Legrenzi sonatas, a Charpentier suite and Iberian composers implicitly inviting viols to help themselves to their contrapuntal organ pieces.

If that sounds like a slightly vague idea to get your head round, it is. But once you stop worrying about it, the good news is that this is an immensely enjoyable listen, its music both ravishing and substantial in the hands of these experienced performers. Savall makes no attempt to hide that they have recorded most of its music before, instead identifying the project as an excuse to celebrate over 50 years of working with it. Thus the best way to consume it is to sit back, treat it as the concert it once was and revel in the sound of viols, lute and percussion played with beauty and wisdom, and in perfect balance. So maybe I did find Charpentier’s Concert pour quatre parties de violes a little sluggish, but I’d defy anyone not to succumb to the grinding inner lines of Dowland’s Lachrimae, the peaty soulfulness of William Brade’s Schottisch Tanz, the noble gravity of Scheidt’s Paduan V or the guitar-driven, drum-rumbling adrenalin rush of his Galliard battaglia XXI.