the result is coherently put together, with Hughes's resourceful vocal imagination and use of tone, plus the subtlety and careful placement of her decorations, drawing the ear again and again.

Shorn of three voices, Dowland's four-part lute songs grow rather than shrink in dramatic stature...Such are the riches of this extraordinary album that one would happily linger amidst such shades for all eternity.

Hughes’s voice retains a natural quality, for all its refinement, which has been skilfully captured – the recording is close enough for her to be able to be soft and confiding, but there’s still a sense of space around the sound. She’s more vocally demonstrative than some, colouring each word individually: when in Dowland’s Flow, My Tears she sings of “fear, and grief, and pain”, we’re left in no doubt that these are three different but equally terrible emotions.

Whether Hughes is singing Dowland, Deborah Pritchard or Errollyn Wallen, her vocal colourings and phrasings are extraordinarily varied and delicate. Decorative frills in the early items are never overdone. Untouched by any bothersome vibrato, she’s in firm control of every register and dynamic, and is particularly affecting singing pianissimo and beyond, as if expressing her private thoughts.