Tomkins is perhaps best known as a later representative of the school of English madrigalists, and one of Byrd’s most talented pupils; yet he composed in all the genres available to him, and left a substantial quantity of keyboard music. Indeed, he was a keen student of the works of other virginalists and, like Byrd, extended his activity in this area to the very last years of his life (he died in 1656, in his early eighties). This disc is part of a projected cycle of all his keyboard music. Tomkins is at his best when unfettered by pre-ordained conceits, and while he cannot match his great mentor’s grasp of form or his knack for writing instantly memorable tunes, the best pieces here are not without charm (the little Toy, for example).
Bernhard Klapprott plays mostly on a harpsichord, and more rarely on a much softer virginal, which is to my ear the more effective of the two instruments for conveying the music’s unaffected delicacy. He strives to find the right expression for each piece; rubato is applied differently from one work to the next according to each piece’s character, rather than exclusively by genre. It is a sensible approach, though I wish that the tempos had been equally varied: they are uniformly on the slow side, even where greater agility would at least be warranted (as in the Galliard). I suspect that the choice of instrument has something to do with this: the virginal’s softer sound encourages more rapid runs, whereas the harpsichord’s seems to do the opposite.
Still, I have grown to like this disc more and more with repeated listening: Klapprott’s advocacy of Tomkins reminds us how much of this first golden age of the keyboard remains unexplored.'