x3?s®,ars back, I recall reviewing two simultaneously released discs of Sweelinck’s sacred music by two mixed Cambridge choirs whose college portals almost lie in each others’ shadow. If that seemed curious in the extreme, then to have two new discs in quick succession of the great Dutchman’s no-less-rarefied keyboard music is probably more a matter of coincidence.

Last month, Robert Woolley gave us a punctiliously prepared and well-balanced programme of Sweelinck recorded in the Pieterskerk in Leiden. Christopher Herrick goes for a recent part-reconstruction of an early 17th-century instrument from the German Church in Stockholm, now used for the burghers of Piteå in north-east Sweden. It is a pleasing, responsive and colourful instrument on which Herrick presents a selection of Sweelinck’s most recognisable and satisfying keyboard works. Unlike Woolley, he avoids the incremental gravitas of the Psalms (some of which are quite lengthy) and favours ‘character’ pieces, such as the Ballo del granduca, or variations and choral preludes on tunes from the local vernacular.

For those yet to experience Sweelinck’s remarkably idiomatic understanding of the keyboard, Herrick provides here a clear-sighted, sweet-sounding and logical view of all the genres, be they of sacred or secular provenance. There is effective understatement to the above-mentioned Ballo (Piet Kee is more opulent in his excellent reading), a genuine dolour in the Pavanas as well as a wry smile in Poolsche dans. Yet elsewhere there is little real instinct for lyricism or even the ambition to bring a fresh, mutable characterisation to the music, especially in the great variation sets, Onder een linde groen (whose bird sounds are both ingratiating and grate) and Mein junges Leben hat ein End whose figuration alone demands both more rhythmic elasticity and sustained intensity than offered here.

Herrick’s seeming resistance towards articulation beyond the short and, at times, choppy, renders such pieces such as Erbarme dich, and the opening Fantasia of the second disc as devoid of the legato phraseology required to enable the music to reach ‘up and out’ as Koopman manages in these works. There may be considerable mileage in adopting ‘older finger technique to bring renewed life to its stylish phrases’ (in Herrick’s words) but not if it inhibits the poignant contours of Sweelinck’s exquisitely formed and incremental linear world.

No one can doubt Herrick’s admirable facility and basic good judgement, as we hear in the great Ionian Toccata, but the musicianship too often communicates prosaic and efficient values over ones which illuminate these highly refined early-Baroque masterpieces. Surface finery in abundance here – and beautifully recorded – but Sweelinck deserves another level of musical perception.