Taking its cover at face value, violin and cornetto duets are the focus of this new chamber recital from the core Seicento Stravagante duo of David Brutti (cornetto/cornetto muto) and Nicola Lamon (organ/harpsichord), joined by their regular collaborator, violinist Rossella Croce. More specifically, though, it’s an exploration of the different ways in which 13 Italian composers of the late 16th and early 17th centuries used their music to reflect the interest in ‘civil conversation’ that was playing out in their time both within learned academies and in the social sphere. These different musical conversational styles range from Milan-born Benedictine monk Serafino Patta’s Canzon francese ‘La Lampugnana’ a due canti of 1613 – in which violin and cornetto take turns to play the musical subject, joining together only at cadences and in one short triple-metre section – to the more involved counterpoint displayed over Giovanni Legrenzi’s La Strasolda (c1650s); or back to a different brand of simplicity for the solo-organ Ricercar ottavo by Francesco Usper Sponga (1561-1641, a Croatian-born pupil and colleague of Andrea Gabrieli in Venice), with its four evenly weighted voices.

In tonal terms, Croce’s bright-toned, gutty stringiness meets Brutti’s combination of softness and edge highly sympathetically (I’m typing this as I listen appreciatively to the aforementioned Patta); and if you want to hear their responsive and nicely balanced dialogue out on full display, then head to the feast of floridly ‘worded’ variety that is Dario Castello’s Sonata quarta (Venice, 1629). I love Lamon’s by turns brassy and honkingly nasal choice of organ stop for Marco Uccellini’s Aria nona a 3 ‘L’Emenfrodito’ (1642), complementing the soloists’ pealing fanfares and comedy conversation between a hen and cuckoo. Brutti in general is a joy, with his sensuous trilling and vibrato, and gently tumbling passagework and slides. Listen to him onwards from 1'00" in Giovanni Battista Buonamente’s Sonata quinta a 2; and this one also really showcases all three’s ability to express personal rhetorical freedom while retaining ensemble togetherness.

It feels a slight shame to have given us Roman organist Girolamo Frescobaldi’s 1628-published Toccata per Spinettina, è Violino – unusual for being a non-solo-instrument toccata, and also for its combination of violin and spinet soloists – with Lamon not on a spinet but the same harpsichord as used elsewhere. But that’s one quibble over what is overall a thoroughly interesting and multifaceted offering.