The broken consort (The Parley Of Instruments; Peter Holman) (1995)

"Lockes consort music has too often been thought of as an imperfect and immature version of the idiom perfected by Purcell. In fact, it is more useful (and certainly more historically appropriate) to see it as the culmination of a great tradition, started nearly a century before by William Byrd and his contemporaries. Lockes Broken Consort fantasias are largely conventional in structure, using a succession of unrelated contrapuntal ideas, though the provision of slow introductions seems to have been his idea, and in the Fantasy of Suite No 4 he largely abandons counterpoint in favour of a freer madrigal-like idiom, which he doubtless thought particularly appropriate for violins. Lockes part-writing is often delightfully angular and his harmony quirkily dissonant, though the feature of his music that most remains in the memory is his wonderful melodic sense (...)." (Parley dirigent Peter Holman in de liner notes) "Essential listening for anyone interested in 17th-century chamber music." (Goldberg)