Baroque violinist (and founder of ensemble L’Estro d’Orfeo) Leonor de Lera’s new solo album Arcadia celebrates the art of the division, or diminution, which in the Renaissance and Baroque periods was a form of improvised variation on, and ornamentation of, a theme. Here – as was often the case in the 16th and 17th centuries – the “theme” was a pre-existing song, usually already well-known to performers and listeners alike.

Arcadia is thus-called as de Lera has chosen to focus on the pastoral genre, which was “very successful in the Renaissance and there were many musical compositions based on pastoral texts whose main theme revolved around nature, love – the joys and torments that it brought with it, unrequited or betrayed loves – death, etc.”.

If you could listen to just one track which best demonstrates de Lera’s dazzling virtuosity and expressiveness, let it be Monteverdi’s famous Lamento della Ninfa, SV163, a famous example of the so-called lamento genre and therefore already a set of variations ripe for further embellishment.

At first,...