The boinging of a jew’s harp makes a surprise opening to this CD, certainly if you had taken the prominence of Purcell’s name on the front at face value. In fact this exploration of the 17th-century obsession with the dangers love poses to sanity mixes Purcell’s songs with a fair helping of traditional tunes, as well as instrumental items and a few contributions from Pepusch, Ravenscroft, Locke and Robert Johnson. Fair enough; there are times when Purcell’s tunes come gloriously close to folk melody, especially in his theatre music. His music here ranges from ‘high-end’ drama of ‘Dido’s Lament’, ‘Bess of Bedlam’ and ‘The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation’ through the sensual beauties of ‘Oh the sweet delights of love’ and ‘O Solitude’ to the ‘low’ expressions of ‘Then mad, very mad let us be’ and a clutch of catches.

Where things depart from what might have been expected is in its performing choices. Dorothee Mields has a fine, conventional voice for this kind of music – pure, pretty and with clear, largely correct English – and she enters into the spirit to the point of the odd deranged cackle, sob or moan. Her singing of the drony ‘The Cruel Mother’ has the haunting qualities of a good folksong performance. Almost all of the music, however, is in arrangements which are quite heavy on instrumental colour – not just continuo and violins but also recorder, flutes and oboes, not to mention percussion. There is certainly flair to the way they are created and performed but they can irritate at times, leaving one thinking longingly of the original. Ultimately they seem more like the kind of adaptations you might hear in a modern staging of a Restoration play than a reflection of the 17th-century sound world. Nothing wrong with that of course, but I thought you should know.