The New Chamber Opera Ensemble made an impact upon me a year ago with its first recording for ASV of Charpentier’s Le mariage forcé and Les fous divertissements. Now it follows that release with a two-disc set of Rameau’s complete cantatas – seven of them, with two versions of Aquilon et Orithie – and it is another fine effort that puts them at the very forefront of the youngest generation of practitioners of period-style performance.

Despite being one of the major figures in the history of the flute, Michel de la Barre is almost wholly absent from the current recording catalogue. True, his reputation lay more with his playing than his composing, but the fact remains that he was the first person ever to publish solo music specifically for flute, and that his output of 18 books of flute music between 1694 and 1725 was a vital factor in the emergence of that instrument as one of the most popular of the eighteenth century.

Johannes Ockeghem (c1410 - 1497) was a composer who had one of the most far reaching impacts on the history of music. He was also the father of the musical form of the canon. So whether it is a canon by a modern composer, by Bach or by Pachabel - all these are but ripples of the impact that this man had on the destiny of Western music. However of all of the surviving works - there is a sadly lost 36 part mass cycle - the Missa Prolationum is the one that shows the grandiosity of his musical vision, his audacity and the genius of his mind perhaps far greater than any other.

At the time of writing, this CD has been on the market for 22 years, and it must be said from the outset that its technical side does not and cannot match up with the standard of later high-bit recordings, nor indeed, to be honest, with the 80's recordings made, for example, by Andreas Glatt for the Accent label in Belgium: the instruments can, indeed, be clearly heard, but there would have been a good deal of room for more spacious use of stereo technology, and possibly the microphones could have been just that little bit nearer to the musicians.

Marais (1656-1728) was once among the least-known French baroque composers, a specialist in the viole (or viola da gamba), an instrument that was already obsolescent in his lifetime but one that he raised to unprecedented heights of technical finesse and expressive power. Now, since the film "Tous les Matins du Monde," in which his role was taken by Gerard Depardieu, his discography has risen to a full, well-deserved column in the Schwann-Opus catalogue. This beautifully styled recording of three suites and a caprice by the Charivari Agreable trio is a fine addition to his discography.