This disc makes a fine pair with Sophie Yates's harpsichord anthology (Chandos 0560), and only one piece is duplicated, Carreira's magnificent Canção (a quatro glosada): I hope that both these recordings encourage more clavichordists and harpsichordists to include such repertoire in concert and on disc.

Wjuniski, playing on two reproductions of Portuguese 18th-century clavichords, elicits a huge variety of colour and attack from the instruments, and, particularly in the more extended works, such as Cabanilles's Gallardas, Coelho's Susana grozada and Correa Braga's Batalha, exhibits a marvellous sense of musical architecture; it is clear that his enjoyment of the small details of these works by no means prevents him from understanding and transmitting the music's structure. Highly recommended: may we have volume 2 soon, please? IVAN MOODY

Sound engineer Pere Casulleras has worked his usual magic on this CD. The two clavichords used by Ilton Wjuniski (copies by Edwin Meier of Portugese instruments kept in the National Music Conservatory in Lisbon) are heard from the player’s point of view, - truly from inside the instrument - which is is surely the best way to capture the entrancing timbre of the clavichord on a recording, and the next best thing to playing oneself. The clavichord was "undoubtedly much more than just a simple keyboard on the Iberian peninsula, according to the excellent liner notes; the ‘monacordio’, as the instrument was known, was important ‘for practice and composition, and for quiet accompaniment, not to mention the rendition of secular forms such as dance movements. (...) It had a capability that the organ was able to realise only through elaborate technical means, namely the ability to play loud and soft with infinite dynamic gradations". Although the selections on this album range from the quiet delicacy of Gaspar Dos Reis’ Concertado sobre o Canto Chao de Ave Maris Stella to the contagious excitement of Antonio Correa Braga’s Batalha (Battle) de 6° Tom, all share a sense of stylish spaciousness and breadth, of large lines. Each piece, whatever its character, gives the impression of being a kind of meditation, albeit with a strong sense of direction. Wjunksi’s choice of late eighteenth-century clavichords for sixteenth- and seventeenth-century repertoire might seem anachronistic, but the originals were conservatively built and ‘differ little from their forerunners’ Their direct, ‘austere’, sometimes positively guitar-like sound (particularly in Carreira’s Cançao) matches the music very well. MARCIA HADJIMARKOS