However many times we perform or hear In darkness let me dwell, Sorrow stay, Flow my tears, or indeed most of the other eighty-odd songs that John Dowland published, the thrill of rediscovery is there. This music is uniquely subtle, touching, inventive, lively, deep – one runs out of adjectives before catching any of the quality that fastens on to singer, player and listener and remains with them after the last note has faded. Dowland is a major figure in his own and any era.

The solo lute pieces are a joy to hear, whether they are taking those familiar song phrases into new worlds, or starting from wholly untrodden territory; they offer singer and audience rest and contrast for a more rounded evening. But Dowland himself declared in 1597 for the superiority of song: ‘yet...higher authoritie and power hath ever been worthily attributed to that kinde of musicke which to the sweetenes of instrument applies the lively voice of man, expressing some worthy sentence or excellent poeme”. He also made an intriguing suggestion – that the songs could be sung by “all voices together or each of them severally”. To be sure, he was wooing the market with his First Booke, full of gorgeous songs, effective in a variety of voicings – and his flattery worked, taking the book into four reprints over sixteen years.    EK