Baroque fiesta with two leading mezzos

It's a Back-to-Baroque fiesta as Deutsche Grammophon's two leading mezzos, Anne Sofie von Otter and Magdalena Kozena, give recitals of music from the 17th and 18th centuries.

Anne Sofie von Otter is enjoying herself on Music for a While and you can hear it from the first track, a rollicking, lusty Amanti, io vi so dire by Benedetto Ferrari with some wild vocalising that almost strays into hootin' and hollerin' territory.

Otherwise the collection is subdued, at its most immediate and intimate in a set of lute songs by John Dowland. In darkness let me dwell and Weep you no more, sad foundations are almost unbearably poignant while the sprightly Can she excuse my wrongs? comes up with some infectious rhythmic and gender play.

Von Otter has a three-man ensemble of keyboards, lute/guitar and theorbo, and each is allotted a solo turn.

Caccini's Dovro dunque morire progresses from sigh to sigh, subtly ornamented against the mournful pluckings of theorbo. Monteverdi's coy Quel sguardo sdegnosetto, with coquettish harpsichord from Jory Vinikour, is a laughing song and laugh it does, with delirious trills and passagework.

Magdalena Kozena's Lamento deals in tears rather than laughter. The austere cover image of the Czech singer is far from the sleek, coutouriered elegance with which she has been presented on her earlier albums. Working with the exemplary Musica Antiqua Koln under Reinhard Goebel, Kozena focuses on German music, mainly from the Bach family.

Lamento opens magisterially with Ach, dass ich Wassers g'nug hatte by Johann Christoph Bach, the most famous forebear of the great Johann Sebastian. Kozena does full justice to this most passionate of arias, with the softest balm-like gutturals and three violas adding intensity to heart-wrenching harmonies.

Johann Sebastian Bach is represented by a disarmingly direct reading of his celebrated Cantata 170, with its memorable blending of wind instruments and mezzo, exquisitely captured in Cologne's Melanchthonkirche.

The set ends in curiosity corner - a two-minute Cantata by C.P.E. Bach exploring the outer limits of late Baroque expressivity and a more extended scena from Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach titled Die Amerikanerin, written to celebrate the American Declaration of Independence.

* Anne Sofie von Otter, Music for a While (Deutsche Grammophon 477 5114)

* Magdalena Kozena, Lament (Deutsche Grammophon 474 1942)