Sophie Yates - The Pleasures of the Imagination: English 18th-Century Music for the Harpsichord (2016)

Collections of Baroque keyboard music are often focused on famous French and German composers, so there's comparatively little available on CD of English harpsichord music of the 18th century, aside from recordings of works by Henry Purcell and George Frederick Handel. Considering the rarity of its material, Sophie Yates' 2016 album on Chaconne, The Pleasures of the Imagination, holds a certain appeal because its selections haven't been dulled by excessive anthologizing. While some of the composers' names may ring a bell, such as John Blow, Jeremiah Clarke, Thomas Arne, and Johann Christian Bach (the "London Bach"), their contributions here will be unknown to most listeners, while William Croft, Maurice Greene, and Richard Jones are known only to specialists in the period. But obscurity doesn't mean boring, and as overlooked as these pieces are, they are remarkably lively and entertaining in Yates' varied and virtuosic performances. Sampling will yield many pleasant surprises, such as the rhythmic play in Blow's delightful Morlake Ground, the quirky "Round O" in Clarke's Suite No. 2, and the affecting dances in Croft's Suite in D minor, just for starters. Yates plays modern copies of a 1681 Vaudry and a 1748 Goujon, which have crisp sonorities in these fairly close-up recordings, made in 2012 at St. George's Church, Brandon Hill, Bristol.