Lunarcy. Songs of Madness and the Moon.

For their album, Lunarcy, countertenor Lawrence Zazzo and lutenist Shizuko Noiri put together a varied recital of songs whose themes relate to the effects the moon can have on the psyche: madness, melancholy, or simply romantic longing. While some of their repertoire consists of traditional English Renaissance and Baroque lute songs by Dowland, Campion, and Purcell, the majority of the selections come from other sources, including two contemporary British song cycles for countertenor and lute by Geoffrey Burgon and Rory Boyle, as well as transcriptions of songs for voice and piano by Mozart, Schumann, and Howells. The result, while still weighted toward the quiet, contemplative side, sidesteps the baleful mood that tends to characterize many albums of lute songs, typified by Dowland's "In darkness let me dwell," which is a ravishing masterpiece but a serious downer emotionally. The Renaissance and Baroque songs are core repertoire for Zazzo and Noiri, who perform them with unforced mastery; the Purcell, particularly "From rosy bow'rs," is poignant but predictably eccentric and Campion's "The cypress curtain of the night" is especially lovely. The rarities are the song cycles, both of which date from the 1980s. The atonality (or, at least, bitonality) of Boyle's "Sonnet found in a deserted mad-house," comes as something of a jolt after the chaste Renaissance harmonies, but the out-of-kilter music is perfectly suited to the bizarre, aptly titled text that ends "your hot kisses burn like a potato riding on the blast." The six songs that make up Burgon's cycle Lunar Beauty, with texts by W.H. Auden and Louis MacNeice, are more conventional harmonically and melodically. Their conventionality makes several of them blandly mundane, but the best, "This Lunar Beauty," and "Now through night's caressing grip," for instance, have a grace and inventiveness reminiscent of Britten. The transcriptions of songs by Howells, Schumann, and Mozart are entirely successful, testimony that much great music has the durability to shine in a variety of guises. The sound quality is wonderfully clean and detailed, and although it creates the impression of existing in a large space, the sound of the performers is present and intimate.