...masterly performance….They perform at a tone below modern pitch…..and this helps to give a darkness of colour that seems exactly right for the music. Intonation is excellent and contrapuntal detail clear, with the great bass providing a resonant foundation and Lindberg's lute is to the fore: this perhaps is what a performance led by Dowland himself might have been like…the pacing throughout shows sensitive regard to the music's natural shape and lyrical flow, and the concluding Lachrimae verae, in which the motion of the parts is almost stilled and the music of tears seems to be stripped to its essence, is most movingly done….all in all one of the best recordings of English consort music that has yet appeared.
Early Music

....the Dowland Consort plays flawlessly in tune and achieves an ensemble feeling considerably more polished and solid than….Lindberg's lute is presented as the lead instrument….here the top lines are sharply delineated by the lute's crisp attacks….Only two microphones are listed in the technical notes in the CD booklet, and a session photo on the back cover shows that these are centrally located. Since the string playing is hardly reserved, Lindberg must be an uncommonly strong lutenist. He is in any case an uncommonly graceful one, and his colleagues (drawn from the familiar pool of British early-music players) collaborate expertly.
Opus

...overall it is Lindberg's group who probe the more deeply into the music, producing richly burnished sonorities aided in no small measure by the sumptuous, but cleanly-textured BIS recording. The lively galliards and remaining pieces…are also that much more full-bodied…for a single version The Dowland Consort is the one to go for.
Goldberg

Dowland considered Lachrimae to be his greatest composition. His first use of it was in the form of a lute solo and then, in his second book of songs printed in 1600, he arranged it for two voices and lute with the title 'Flow my teares fall from your springs'. Both these versions achieved a phenomenal popularity and in 1604 he printed his Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans for five viols or violins and lute in which he used the piece as a starting point for seven sublime pavans. Viols and lute are used for this recording and Jakob Lindberg directs members of The Dowland Consort and they perform all 21 pieces of the collection.

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