Pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen covers much of the same ground in this album of keyboard works by the English virginalists as did Kit Armstrong in his album of John Bull and William Byrd (DG, 8/21). Momen includes a wider selection of composers, including the beloved hexachord fantasia Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, the Dutch fount of early polyphony who likely met and may have befriended Bull. Whereas Armstrong offered Byrd and Bull as progenitors of modern keyboard style, Momen creates a sonic picture of the Tudor age, with works by Gibbons rounding out the album.

The two pianists aim for the same result, which may already have been achieved: establishing this music not as fringe piano fare, borrowed from harpsichordists, but as core to the piano repertoire. Perhaps it already is. Works such as Byrd’s The Bells and Will yow walke the woods so wylde are becoming fairly common among pianists, and both Armstrong and Momen include them on their recordings.

Armstrong sought to demonstrate continuities between past and present, and his approach stressed an incipient modernity in the Tudor age. The touch was sharper and the dynamic range wider than that employed here. Momen, however, both in her title for the album, ‘Reformation’, and in her performance, seeks an underlying spirituality to the music. The playing is smoother, the touch lighter, the aim more to comfort the mind than arrest it. In the Byrd variations on The woods so wylde she renders the theme with more lilt than snap, while Armstrong marks the rhythms sharply and focuses on crystal clarity to the inner lines. In The Bells, we hear a gathering peal and riot of sound in Armstrong, brighter and more bumptious than Momen’s sense of a carillon heard murmuring in the distance.

Less dramatic but more even-tempered and sometimes even delightfully sentimental, Momen’s approach is different but no less satisfying. I admired Armstrong’s freedom and flirtation with anachronism, but I find this album exerts a stronger emotional appeal. It makes a fine complement to the earlier one, even with a number of works overlapping. If this is to be core repertoire for contemporary pianists, then bring on the pleasure of comparing and contrasting multiple artists grappling with the same material.