The Language of Love: Songs of the troubadours and trouveres

AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE CHOICE OF 2007

'An exemplary medieval disc from this young duo. The troubadour material is various … and the performers are beguiling. Faye Newton's pure, vibrato-light soprano suggests Emma Kirkby with rouged cheeks; while Hazel Brooks's accompaniments lift the vielle, a rustic lyre, to an instrument of enchantment … With these artists time stands still. A "chill-out" hit in the making' (The Times)

'Most of these songs from medieval France explore the infinite emotional complexities of hopeless love. Soprano Faye Newton characterises their wide-ranging, rhapsodic melodic lines so as to evoke both unbearable pain and despair and brief moments of joy. On the lighter side, she brings wry humour to tales of pastoral seduction, and of a spirited wife whose husband objects to her boyfriend. Hazel Brooks's piquant vielle provides atmospheric accompaniments that perfectly enhance all these moods, as well as some delightful dances' (The Daily Telegraph)

'Faye Newton and Hazel Brooks build compelling, eloquent performances around the evocative words of their repertoire' (Classic FM Magazine *****)

'Duo Trobairitz re-create the sound world and the artistic idiom with sufficient authority that, were the original creators of this music to come back and hear these performances … they would have stamped their feet in approval … The lovely anonymous Bele Doette in which Newton's disarmingly charming voice and Brooks's sensitive playing on the vielle evoke a world which, while distant and remote from ours, clearly relished the same profound response to the kind of emotions which affect mankind, be it a twelfth-century knight or a twenty-first-century audiophile. On the subject of audiophiles, Hyperion has captured these delightful performances with ideal depth and intimacy' (International Record Review)

'There are some outstanding renditions here … Newton is fresh-voiced and immediate, and Brooks is a vigorous accompanist' (Early Music)

'This is among the best recordings of this repertoire … I will always enjoy being challenged to listen to these works in such fresh and sensitive interpretations as these' (American Record Guide)