A few years back, Sting’s friend the guitarist Dominic Miller gave him a nine-course lute as a gift; Miller also introduced him to lutenist Edin Karamazov, a meeting which eventually resulted in this recording of songs and lute pieces interspersed with readings from a letter by Dowland addressed to Sir Robert Cecil. Bizarre? Undoubtedly; but even more so is the fact that it actually works.

Sting’s readings are well considered and evocative; an equally careful attention to the song texts evinces a willingness to give into the prevailing affect while still in contemporary mode, the decision to treat the songs as pop material resulting in a rawness and emotional energy that’s often lacking in more polished performances. The four-part realisations of some verses (Sting’s voice here multi-tracked) results in an appropriately surreal effect, much like looking at one’s reflection in a broken mirror, while Karamazov’s dazzling lute playing (the two Fantasies on this recording are spectacular) is suitably brash and improvisatory, providing the perfect complement to Sting’s “unschooled tenor”.

Sting says the idea was to give “a sense of the man himself” and I really think both he and Karamazov manage to bring Dowland before the listener as a living, breathing person in a way more orthodox recordings often fail to do. The success of this enterprise almost defies logic – it’s like one of those Buddhist koans that confounds the mind in order to reach the truth. You’ll either love “Songs from the Labyrinth” or you’ll hate it – but you’ll not be left unmoved.