Risplendenti, Riversi

Bosnian-born Nataša Mirković has been exploring the borderlands between early music and Balkan melodies for some years. Both categories are somewhat porous and occasionally overlap, but this unusual, faintly eccentric collection leans towards the classical aesthetic, and does so with great success. The heart of the album, to which everything else is oriented, is an aria from the 17th-century opera La Calisto. It begins with a fairly standard realisation of the sparse original score, except the continuo is not a harpsichord or archlute but an accordion, and the instrument echoing the voice is a brass serpent, with a long curving wooden body, metal keys and trombone-like mouthpiece. Then a frame drum enters, sounding distinctly eastern Mediterranean, and the brass lead takes off into a jazz-inflected improvisation over the song’s bassline. It shouldn’t work, but it does, beautifully.

Mirković’s tautly controlled voice, pure in tone and sometimes faintly husky, unifies these songs from points east of Genoa and west of Cairo, while thoughtful, sparse support by the instrumentalists serves to complete the sound. One playful original by Mirković, about a questing hedgehog, lightens the predominantly serious atmosphere, which culminates in the slow, powerful closer, ‘Kom Shtëpin’.