GENTLY SPANNING 500 YEARS, A BEAUTIFULLY PERFORMED SELECTION OF SOOTHING LULLABIES Montserrat Figueras 'spins beautiful lines from exotic material' on an altogether ravishing recital Anonymous My little sweet darlingb. Mareta, no'm faces plorarbe Byrd Come, pretty babeb Falla Siete canciones populates españolas - Nanab Lorca Canciones espaflolas antiguas - Nana de Sevillab Merula Hor ch'è tempo di dormireb Milhaud Berceuse, Op 86 No P' Mussorgsky The Nursery - With the dolla Part Christmas Lullabyb. Kuus, kuns kallikebc Reger Maria Wiegenlied, Op 76 No 52a Reichardt Chanson dune malheureuse mere - Dors men enfantb Traditional Nani, nanib.osé embala o menino1. Sleep, my baby . Arnazigh lullabyb. Noumi nourni yaldatib. La mare de Déub Montserrat Figueras sop cArianna Savall sop Paul Badura-Skoda pfbFlesperion XXI Alia Vox ® AV9826 (77 minutes: DDD) Texts and translations included $

There have been anthologies of lullabies before, but surely few that have ranged as widely as this one. In geographical terms the programme stretches from Portugal to Greece, Russia to Morocco; and, in the roughly chronological order in which they are presented, the songs start back in the medieval era and end with a pair of specially-composed lullabies by Arvo Prt that were written, as it were, yesterday.

Among the items most distant from our own time and culture are a pair of anonymous Greek and Sephardic lullabies, in which Montserrat Figueras spins beautiful lines from exotic material. One takes it on trust that she is well schooled in these widely differing styles and languages, though it is disconcerting in her Byrd lullaby that she does not seem to feel the rhythm of the English text and barely a word is intelligible. The accompaniments field a small army of specialists, including Jordi Savall leading the viols, Andrew Lawrence-King on harp, Paul Badura-Skoda for the piano accompaniments, and other players on flutes, guitars, bells and non-Western instruments.

The two Piirt lullabies -. one in Russian, the other a duet in Estonian - are scored for a consort of viols with psaltery and are in tuneful diatonic mode, both attractive. The Catalan lullaby, Mareta, mareta, no'm faces plorar, performed as a duet, isawelcome discovery. Milhaud's Dors, clors uses harmonies judiciously and to piquant effect. Jordi Savall has produced performing versions of some of the items, including the well-known 'Nana' from Falla's Seven Popular Spanish Songs, which comes out three times the usual length and having gained a viola da gamba obbligato.

At first sight this disc may look popularist, but it has loftier pretensions - as its booklet, with learned article and texts in eight languages, leaves no doubt. Richard Fairman