Many people have recorded the fourteenth-century instrumental dances that appear only in a single manuscript now in London. Apart from some pieces apparently for keyboard, they are almost the only known early works for a solo melody instrument. Some of the longer and more elaborate ones invite the most aggressively virtuosic playing, as best displayed in the versions recorded many years ago by David Munrow; and the short ones are so simple and memorable that they are among the first pieces played by any instrumentalist interested in medieval music. So the nine pieces (out of a total of 15) presented here offer no repertorial novelty.
What is new is the way Stevie Wishart plays them. She views the shorter pieces as dances, to be performed with percussion accompaniment. This is common enough, though they are done extremely well, with Jim Denley and Pedro Estevan producing a stunning range of sounds from their various percussion instruments. But the longer ones are treated as elaborate and weaving instrumental solos, without any accompaniment. Stevie Wishart plays them on the vielle and, in one case, on the hurdy-gurdy, never rushing, never tempted to gloss over the many unexpected details in the lines. This kind of approach seems extremely productive: it stresses the sheer quality and inventiveness of the melodies, and it perhaps aligns them with their true historical context, the repertory of long monophonic lais from the fourteenth century. That in its turn somehow makes the pieces considerably more than virtuoso showpieces. But it says much for the power of Stevie Wishart’s playing that she keeps the music constantly interesting (one of the pieces lasts over ten minutes) and is invariably persuasive.
The disc comes with a CD-ROM track that portrays, among other things, frescoes of the time, the instruments and the manuscript. But even without that this is a superbly convincing performance, recorded with a nice full sound and giving relatively familiar music an added intellectual depth.'