Until comparatively recently the repertory of early sixteenth-century Italian courtly songs known collectively as frottole appears to have interested musicologists far more than performers. Happily the position has changed during the last few years, and the present record stands as yet another effective demonstration of their peculiar charm. Frottole appear to have been performed most commonly by a single voice with instruments playing the accompanying lightly polyphonic parts, and the responsibility for sustaining the interest through what is often a substantial chain of musically identical verses thus falls squarely on the shoulders of the soloist. In this recording, Emily van Evera has taken on the challenge with evident pleasure, and risen to it with both confidence and intelligence. What a splendid singer of early music she is turning out to be! Even if her Italian is a trifle too well manicured, the spirit of her readings is infectious and her technique is rock solid (test it if you wish in the tortuous melismas of the anonymous Chiu dicese non l'amare). It is largely on account of her contribution that substantial songs such as Marchetto Cara's O mia cieca de dura sorte and Tromboncino's setting of two stanzas from Petrarch's Vergine bella cycle assume a quality of sustained seriousness. Hearing them, one wonders why the frottola is still so often described as a lightweight genre. The quality of the instrumental playing is also high throughout. Purists may raise an eyebrow over the use of the lirone (a resonant bass cousin of the lira da braccio), which may well be anachronistic, but this is a minor detail and its reedy character is thrilling in the slower songs.
Both sides of this record are well filled, with generous playing time and a widely contrasted range of pieces. Texts and translations, essential to the serious listener, are issued with the LP and available from the distributors for those who choose the cassette. The sound of the latter seemed to me marginally less brilliant than that of the record, but there is really very little to choose between them. This is certainly a recommended purchase, whether you wish to listen attentively to the songs or simply to use them as no doubt they would have been heard much of the time at the courts of Mantua and Ferrara for which they were composed: as modest, charming background music.'