The York Early Music Festival has a feminist slant this year, with a programme designed to prove that the western classical tradition was not always dominated by males. The earliest developments in notation and polyphony were as much a product of the convents as the monasteries, and ordained composers - from Abbess Hildegard in the 12th century to Mother Isabella Leonarda in the 17th - show that there was no shortage of sisters doing it for themselves.
The greatest revelation of the opening weekend was the chance to absorb the sound of 17th-century Italian convents, where Leonarda and her slightly earlier contemporary Caterina Assandra produced passionate motets of frankly startling worldliness. Maria Cristina Kiehr and Concerto Soave performed these works alongside racy secular cantatas from the Florentine and Venetian courts - and challenged you to tell the difference.
Kiehr possess the ideal voice for this kind of repertoire. In fact, she seems to possess several voices, not all of them beautiful, but always responsive to the meaning of the text. Over the course of a single line she may swoop from a sibilant whisper, which sounds like angels weeping, to an angry cluck like a goose being throttled.
The crystalline tone of the Tallis Scholars is more astringent, but exquisitely balanced to create the impression of 12 voices blended into a single organism. This year Peter Phillips' choir has an important birthday to observe: Thomas Tallis is - conjecturally, at least - 500 years old, and York Minster was packed to hear the celebration.
In keeping with the festival theme of the female muse, the programme centred on works commissioned by Elizabeth I, possibly for her private chamber, as it is hard to imagine some of these pieces having a place in the Anglican liturgy. An undoubted highlight was the stunning Salve intemerata, an almost indecently sensual exultation of the Virgin Mary that suspends the sopranos in a state of soaring rapture for almost 15 minutes. Whatever Elizabeth's religious politics at the time, her taste in music remained remarkably Catholic.
· Festival continues at various venues until Saturday. Box office: 01904 658338.
