The Curious Bards

It seems to represent the next step in historical performance practice: the acknowledgment of (and attempt to recreate) a musico-historical psychology. The exactitude in HIP — a perfectionism that can threaten to suck the emotional life out of the music — is replaced here with expressive abandon, capturing the experience of playing and hearing music in the 18th century, not just the scholarly, cellular facts. (...) Everything about this musical experiment is a success. Happily, there’s a lot more of the world for The Curious Bards to explore.