Despite the title, there are no masterpieces here, just a pleasant 70 minutes or so in the company of domestic music for viola da gamba, lute and keyboard from late 18th-century England. A glance at the list of composer names quickly reveals that a situation existed then not at all dissimilar to that which prevails in English football today – namely an almost total dominance by foreigners. The Linleys, father and son, are the only home-grown talents on view, the rest coming from Italy and Germany. J C Bach and gamba virtuoso Carl Friedrich Abel are relatively familiar names, but a rare outing is also given to the music of Rudolf Straube, a lute-playing pupil of J S Bach, whose years in England were mostly spent in straitened circumstances. To be frank, his lute pieces, for all that they set popular tunes such as The Lass of Peatie’s Mill and the Hornpipe (yes, that one, making one of its earliest appearances), seem with their sometimes ungainly harmonies unlikely to have been the stuff fortunes are made on.
It seems strange to be hearing music from this era, with all its galant gestures, on these old- fashioned instruments. Historically speaking, we are used to thinking of music as entering a new phase at this time, with both the gamba and the lute very definitely on their last legs, and even the harpsichord (heard here in an urbane sonata by J C Bach) soon to fall to the piano. But, away from the brilliance and faddishness of court and concert hall, perhaps these were just the sounds to be heard in the wealthy households whose inhabitants Gainsborough painted so memorably when he was not, as Lynda Sayce describes him in an entertaining booklet-note, knocking around and getting drunk with musicians. Charivari Agreable have long specialised in finding repertoire for their particular line-up, and indeed in cleverly creating more for it when not enough exists, and thus we get a number of arrangements, mostly of vocal items, by the group’s gamba player Susanne Heinrich, who proceeds to play them with impeccable good taste. Likewise, the playing of lutenist Sayce and keyboard player Kah-Ming Ng cannot really be faulted. Nice enough listening, then, though not the most compelling music.'