Le Jardin Secret is a young ensemble that won both first prize and the audience prize in the 2007 Early Music Network International Young Artists’ Competition in York, UK. It’s easy to hear why; there’s a real vibrancy and freshness to these performances that compels one to hit the ‘repeat’ button for virtually every track.

“Musique pour Mazarin!” is Le Jardin Secret’s first recording, and features Italian and French vocal music from the time of the Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661) and beyond. Thus we have works by Italian composers like Carissimi, Rossi and Pasqualini juxtaposed with those of French masters like Marc Antoine Charpentier, Lully, Louis Couperin and Campra.

Elizabeth Dobbins’ soprano is light and flexible without ever sounding eviscerated; her approach is both stylish and highly expressive. This is as obvious in the relative simplicity of Pierre Guédron’s Aux plaisirs as it is in the more intense Si ch’io voglio sperare by Marc Antonio Pasqualini or “Le perfide Renaud me fuit” from Lully’s Armide.

Dobbins is accompanied by a continuo group variously comprising theorbo, guitar, harpsichord, viola da gamba, cello and basse de violon; the playing is consistently excellent. The artistry of Sofie Vanden Eynde and David Blunden can also be savoured on its own, that of the former in a fine account of Robert de Visée’s arrangement of Lully’s Chaconne des Harlequins for theorbo, the latter’s in a selection of works for harpsichord including Michelangelo Rossi’s Toccata Settima.

Well-recorded and with superb booklet notes by Catherine Cessac, Musique pour Mazarin! is an auspicious debut indeed. WILLIAM YEOMAN