You might think Dowland, Cage and Sting strange bedfellows but a common thread of intimacy and concise expression in performance unifies this gentle yet sensational album. Having succeed so well with Josquin (11/21), Jean-Christophe Groffe now directs a project that may seem excessively idiosyncratic from the outside but which has surprising sonic coherence from within. The spine is formed from songs for two voices and lute by John Dowland. Ivo Haun and Groffe himself are a delightful vocal pairing, with almost telepathic accompaniment from Ziv Braha. They keep text at the forefront and in ‘I saw my lady weepe’ manage to invoke melancholy without sacrificing the sting of the words.

The interleaving of Cage and Dowland takes some explaining, and this happens at length in the booklet note, but happily the musical synergy is obvious when you listen. Groffe’s immaculately understated performance of Cage’s Solo for Voice No 91 is mesmeric and deeply moving. After a deadly serious opening section, a starbust of electronics on the word ‘avoid’ introduces the autotune interventions of Nikki Buzzi, some of which – especially the last – are quite beautiful. There’s a feeling of medieval organum here in the alternation of monophony with electronics, as if Groffe were channelling Pérotin. But it’s the following segue – or rather a gentle glide – into Dowland’s ‘Lady if you so spight mee’ that will have you nodding with revelation. On paper it looks like it shouldn’t work, but in sound it absolutely does. Listen for the little dart of energy shooting through the word ‘spight’ as Haun sings it: delicious onomatopoeia.

Sting’s ‘Shape of my heart’, itself a modern classic from the early 1990s, closes this album. Sung by the artist himself, Sting brings a smooth melancholy to this passacaglia and his vocals are in clear dialogue with Dowland. The song’s presence is also a nod to the many times it has been sampled by others and thus it becomes a fitting conclusion to this epic programme. Beyond this, the lingering aftertaste is of Nikki Buzzi’s electronics, the beauty and overarching connections of which triangulate this album in three places, often with extreme subtlety but always with poignancy.