In her booklet note to La Rêveuse’s latest superb release, the ensemble’s co-founder, gamba player Florence Bolton, remarks how the master Sainte-Colombe virtually transforms his haunting, original Tombeau les regrets ‘like a poetic demiurge’ into a memento mori. If this is so, then it is equally true of the student Marin Marais’s contrastingly jaunty Chaconne en rondeau, as though its brilliance were reflecting the gloom of the ‘Tombeau pour M de Ste Colombe’ which on this recording precedes it as a veritable danse macabre. This is less down to the tenebrous nature of the bass viol’s tone and register than to La Rêveuse’s ability to identify and dramatise persistent plangent undercurrents in a way that feels utterly natural and unaffected – yet profoundly affecting.

I was struck, for example, by a propensity to relish held concords and discords alike while vivifying more animated passages in works as different as the ‘Cloches ou Carillon’ and the marvellous Couplets de Folies. As for the E minor Suite’s Prélude, theorbo and viols seem to awaken slowly from a deathlike slumber, making for quite an arresting opening to the programme. In contrast, Perrot’s Chaconne in G by Robert de Visée for solo theorbo is crisp and pungent yet gentle and wistful all the same.

La Rêveuse core members Bolton and Perrot are joined on this occasion only by gamba player Emily Audouin and harpsichordist Carsten Lohff, the smaller ensemble capturing the enduringly mysterious qualities of Marais’s music with intimacy, warmth and style.