Catherine Bott, Pavlo Beznosiuk, Mark Levy - Delectatio angeli - Music of love, longing & lament

An extract from Kate Bott�s introduction to this recording:�This project began over lunch at Pavlo Beznosiuk�s house, when he, Mark Levy and I were spending a day playing through our favourite repertoire, with a view to making a CD celebrating the compelling sound of one voice and two fiddles. The fiddle was a five-stringed bowed instrument which was the most important musical instrument in the middle ages, because in the hands of a master fiddler it could so closely follow and imitate the human voice. We�d begun exploring this combination of gut strings (theirs and mine) almost by chance a few years ago�and the experience proved so liberating that we kept going.�There are various ways of creating a programme for a recording. You can record someone�s complete output within a genre�but no one wrote their songs and dances exclusively for soprano and fiddles. You can devise a programme around a theme�well, the overwhelming topic for solo songs is, of course, unrequited love, but that would mean leaving out so many interesting lyrics. Or you can just make a delicious and varied selection of great music from among your own personal favourites and go into a recording studio.�A studio? When it is a truth universally acknowledged that early music is always recorded in a lovely country church? How could we deprive ourselves of all those stirring times when your best performance ever fades into a Gothic silence accompanied only by the distant roar of a ride-on lawnmower, or a reassuring helicopter accompanying the passage of Someone Very Important to the nearest country house hotel? Without a backward glance, as it turned out.�Mark and Pavlo are players of international standing on the Baroque viol and violin�I never fail to be moved by the passion and spontaneity of their performances on medieval fiddles, and I�m bowled over by their commitment to getting the most out of these more primitive instruments. It was one of those magical recordings that was a delight to make from start to finish.�Whether you�re discovering this wondrous music for the first time or are revisiting much-loved repertoire, I hope you enjoy these pieces as much as we do.�