In Scotland we are fortunate to enjoy a living oral tradition which features the performance of lengthy ballads to simple melodies in a manner which would certainly have been recognisable to our forebears in previous centuries, and it seems sensible to draw on this tradition when reconstructing a performance of 'Graysteil.' This cross-fertilisation between the traditional and art music of Scotland also serves helpfullly to undermine our modern habit of catagorising music, an irrelevance which would never even have occurred to James IV or his 'fithelaris'! - D. James Ross

The revival of the lute and its repertoire in the later twentieth century has been so thorough that it is difficult now to remember how much a "distant shore" the instrument seemed to musicians even a few generations ago. Like the cornett or the viola da gamba or the harpsichord, it was an instrument - and a repertoire, and a set of performance practices - that was all but dead for many years, that needed to be revived more or less from scratch. As for the lute music of the later Baroque period, it represents an instrument long past its heyday: even late-Baroque musicians themselves considered the lute a distant shore - an anachronism.

Bach, the lute, and the lautenwerk (lute-harpsichord) have fascinated me for years. Upon investigating Bach's connection with the two instruments, one is immediately faced with the striking absence of one vital piece of evidence: though we know that many lautenwerks existed, none, to our knowledge, have survived into our time. The lautenwerk, the name by which it is usually known in German and English, was a harpsichord like instrument of one or two manuals with the same range as lute, but somewhat lower than the harpsichord. It was strung with gut rather than brass. - Nigel North, London, June 1994

One of the finest Christmas recordings ever made, this 1994 production by the Baltimore Consort makes a welcome return (complete with a new cover) along with the revival of the Dorian label. Glowing with the high, clear soprano of Custer LaRue and brimming with versatile, virtuoso instrumental work by Mary Anne Ballard (viols, rebec), Mark Cudek (cittern, Baroque guitar, viols, bandora), Larry Lipkis (viol, recorder, gemshorn), Ronn McFarlane (lute), Chris Norman (wooden flutes, pennywhistle), and Webb Wiggins (organ), this program literally lives up to the promise of its title.

Many of these 20 tunes/carols/dances are among the most familiar Christmas standards--Ding dong merrily on high; Greensleeves; Es ist ein' Ros' entsprungen; In dulci jubilo; The Cherry Tree Carol; Tomorrow shall be my dancing day--presented in both vocal/instrumental and strictly instrumental arrangements. But whatever the tune, and however it's presented, the result is invariably engaging, artful, classy, and infinitely repeatable, which means it's perfect for multiple repetitions, whether at Christmas or any other time of year. Chris Norman's flute improvisation on "Es ist ein' Ros' entsprungen" is a classic, and Custer LaRue's rendition of the beautiful "Rorate coeli desuper" is not to be missed. In fact, that last instruction applies to this entire disc. If you're a Christmas music fan (and who isn't?) and you don't already own this CD, you know what you have to do.

-- David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

The tradition of transcribing, arranging and adapting the music of Johann Sebastian Bach can be traced to the master himself: Bach made a lifelong habit of arranging works, his own and those of other composers. Indeed, Bach ranks among the most skilled and prolific arrangers in the history of music. Arrangements of his work by others can be considered in two broad catagories. In the first are contained those transcriptions which do not incorporate substantial changes to the original compositions, for example Liszt's Six Preludes and Fugues. In the second category are found those arrangements which display a creative intent on the part of the arranger - one can think of Mozart's transcription for string trio of six fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier, each preceded by an original prelude (KV 404a), or Gounod's Méditation sur le premier prélude de piano de S. Bach (1853), to which the words of the Ave Maria were subsequently added. It is to this latter genre of creative Bach transcriptions that the works contained on this disc belong. - Thomas Labé