Album: De Visée / Couperin etc, The Nightingale...(Linn)

Strikingly different in style to Maurice Steger's sequinned brilliance, recorder virtuoso Pamela Thorby's soft, sweet, natural tone is ideally suited to the whimsical delicacies of d'Hervelois, Philidor and Dieupart.

The birds and butterflies of French Baroque music are artful accomplices to Eros and Morpheus, and genial companions for summer evenings. Lutenist Elizabeth Kenny introduces a deeper melancholy in her twilit performance of De Visée's Passacaille. Only Couperin's Double du Rossignol overstays its welcome.