This latest release in the Royal Academy of Music Bicentenary Series, featuring innovative young Dutch violinist Charlotte Spruit, takes its inspiration from 17th-century reports found in a famous magazine, as well as the Parisian salon of the same period.

Le Mercure Galant was a cutting-edge literary and society magazine founded by Jean Donneau de Visé in 1672. Covering current affairs, courtly gossip, fashion, theatre, science and music, it continues today as a publishing house, but as a magazine it especially flourished during the reign of Louis XIV. The magazine could be seen as the printed counterpart of the Parisian salon, which also cultivated and promoted intellectual and cultural exchange while always avid for the latest news and gossip. Le Mercure Galant not only published sheet music; it also reported on musical activities and events such as court performances of the violin works of Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre and Johann Paul von Westhoff, both of which apparently astonished the King.

Together with lutenist Sergio Bucheli and gamba player Jonathan Manson, Spruit masterfully recreates what one imagines must have been the atmosphere of a typical salon from a musical perspective, performing works by the aforementioned composers as well as pieces by another court favourite, the lutenist and composer Robert de Visée, and transcriptions of songs by Michel Lambert and Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Spruit’s overall approach is immediately on display in the Westhoff Suite for solo violin, with not only lavish ornamentation and over-dotting but subtle use of spiccato and pizzicato adding colour and variety (listen to the Allemande in particular) to an already generous palette.

Speaking of colour, Bucheli’s continuo realisations are as vivid as anything more fully composed, while Manson’s contributions provide a firm underpinning where required while taking flight whenever the opportunity arises, such as in the exquisite Adagio from Jacquet de La Guerre’s Violin Sonata No 1 in D minor.

All in all, a fine debut from an artist whose technique and musicality are matched by a broader artistic imagination.