What a very interesting character Mr Charles Avison of Newcastle must have been. An 18th-century renaissance man, he composed, conducted and wrote about the theory of music. He had a wide-ranging interest in European music and made arrangements of Scarlatti harpsichord sonatas for strings. Those have been recorded, but entirely new to disc are these lovely English versions of Benedetto Marcello’s psalm settings from his Estro-poetico armonico, famous in their day, which Avison and John Garth made in 1757. With their vivid word-setting and lively declamation, the English texts give a slightly homespun quality to the enterprise. Well sung, there’s a striking triple canon with Latin text to finish.
