Briefly Noted: In a Strange Land

In a Strange Land: Elizabethan Composers in Exile, Stile Antico (released on January 11, 2019) Harmonia Mundi HMM902266 | 71'10"

We have been following the British choir Stile Antico for over a decade at Ionarts. They are the inheritors of the work of the Tallis Scholars among the younger generation of early music singers, and each CD they release, especially of music from the English Renaissance, has been exquisite. Their latest disc is no exception, in pieces by William Byrd, Peter Phillips, and Robert White. The theme of this program is especially poignant: it brings together composers who found themselves alienated, either in foreign lands (John Dowland, Peter Phillips, Richard Dering) or as Catholics in Protestant England (William Byrd, Robert White).

The choir goes somewhat outside its comfort zone with the affecting part-song arrangements of lute songs by Dowland, Flow, My Tears and In this trembling shadow cast. The results are impeccably balanced homophony, with crunchy cross-relations underscoring emotional peaks. The same is true of a modern piece, The Phoenix and the Turtle by Huw Watkins, premiered by Stile Antico in 2014 and set to an eccentric text possibly revealing the Catholic sympathies of one William Shakespeare. In that context we must place the impassioned dissonances of Bird's ultra-personal motet Tristitia et anxietas or of Quomodo cantabimus, the same composer's musical response to Philippe de Monte's motet Super flumina Babylonis, both about people marooned among non-believers oppressing them.

Anne Sofie von Otter @ LoC

Sogno barocco, A. S. von Otter, S. Piau, S. Sundberg, Ensemble Cappella Mediterranea, L. García Alarcón (released on August 28, 2012) Naïve V 5286 | 71'

As noted yesterday, Anne Sofie von Otter is a versatile singer; but maybe not able to do everything. Her recital at the Library of Congress on Tuesday night, in a packed Coolidge Auditorium, had some high points, but it raised eyebrows, too, and not just mine. Her renditions of John Dowland's pearl-like lute songs came nowhere near the artful grace of Iestyn Davies in his Dowland recital, when he also partnered with lutenist Thomas Dunford last year. There were moments of vocal strain, probably related to being at the end of an American tour with this program, which exposes Otter's voice at the top in not always pleasant ways. The instrumentalists, Dunford on theorbo and Jonathan Cohen on harpsichord and organ, even got into the act, singing the part-song versions of some of the pieces, in a way that recalled Sting's excursion into Dowland territory a few years ago. This added a certain roughneck charm on Dowland's Fine knacks for ladies, with its wares-hawking text rendered in a street vendor's broad accent.

The later Baroque selections often suited von Otter's voice better, except for when some odd musical characterization drove her to excess, as in the shivering repetitions of Purcell's What Power Art Thou from King Arthur. The composer's more conventional pieces, like Music for a While and especially Venus's Fairest Isle, also from King Arthur, were lovely. At least a partial reason for von Otter's choice of repertory seemed to be based on the oddity of some pieces, beginning with Francesco Provenzale's cantata Squarciato appena havea, which interpolates Neapolitan street ballads, of extremely low, even ribald content, into an artful lament by the Queen of Sweden Maria Eleonora over her dead husband. Recorded on her Sogno barocco album, it is a truly weird piece, and von Otter brought out all its eccentricities, reaching for a tambourine and other percussion instruments to heighten the shift between learned and popular.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Anne Sofie von Otter has chosen to be a singer who is expressive, not excessive (Washington Post, November 19) James R. Oestreich, Review: The Mezzo-Soprano Anne Sofie von Otter at the Frick Collection (New York Times, November 15) David Patrick Stearns, Anne Sofie von Otter at the Perelman: Warm, expansive, charismatic (Philadelphia Inquirer, November 13)

Dunford's solo contributions were some of the best parts of this concert, especially a heartfelt performance of Dowland's Lachrimae Pavan, the instrumental version of his wrenching song Flow My Tears. It reduced me to tears, an unspoken tribute to the victims of the Paris terror attacks the previous Friday, something that Dunford did not need to say aloud. His version of Robert de Visée's D Minor Chaconne was equally touching, a nice connection to the theme of ground bass tunes in the French part of the program -- including Michel Lambert's Vos mespris chaque jour, composed on the same bass pattern as Monteverdi's famous Pur ti miro from L'incoronazione di Poppea. While Cohen provided beautiful continuo playing, his solo pieces, composed for harpsichord by Couperin (Les barricades misterieuses) and Rameau (Les sauvages) became slightly odd with accompanying parts improvised by Dunford on theorbo.

One of the highlights was an austere rendition of Arvo Pärt's My Heart's in the Highlands, from 2000, which introduced a concluding section of recent popular songs (not reviewed). Pärt's original organ part was here split between Cohen playing the longer notes on the Baroque organ and Dunford taking the arpeggiated notes on theorbo. In a twelve-measure pattern, with four measures of the voice declaiming the text on a single note followed by eight bars of instruments alone, the piece has a mesmerizing quality and the combination of these three musicians created a sense of timeless stasis. Since my family's trip this past summer to see where our Downey ancestors came from in Scotland, this poem by Robert Burns and this musical setting have greater meaning for me.

The Library of Congress's 90th anniversary season continues this evening with a concert by Apollo's Fire, the Baroque ensemble based in Cleveland, and soprano Amanda Forsythe (November 19, 8 pm).

Folger Consort's Musical Heraldry

Charles T. Downey, Folger Consort presents Renaissance pieces (Washington Post, September 29, 2014)

Heraldry, the elaborate system of coats of arms that was an expression of family pride in past eras, remains as a tangible emblem of history. One possible musical counterpart, dances and songs written for and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I and her courtiers, was the focus of the Folger Consort’s first program of the season, heard on Friday night, offered in parallel to the heraldry exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Four members of the recently formed Arcadia Viols joined their colleague Robert Eisenstein to perform dance pieces for viol consort, a family of instruments at the height of its popularity in the Renaissance... [Continue reading]

Folger Consort, with Arcadia Viols
Courting Elizabeth, with tenor James Taylor
Folger Shakespeare Library

Dip Your Ears, No. 173 (The Image of Melancholy)

Anthony Holborne, John Dowland, et al. The Image of Melancholy Bjarte Eike / Barokksolistene BIS

Creaking and Whispering

Modern and ancient, creaking and whispering, haunting and pleading, Irish, oriental, occidental and accidental: The atmospheric, contemplative album from Bjarte Eike and the Barokksolistene combines early music (Holborne, Dowland, Byrd, Buxtehude, Biber) with traditional Norwegian and Irish folk music in his arrangements, and a soupçon of suitable contemporary pieces. The way these works are picked and performed, you can hardly tell where one begins and the other ends until you’re half way through a song. The result is a haunting and varied collection of miniatures that Eike describes as not belonging to any particular style, nationality or period in time; but rather being a string of tunes, songs and expressions that are of personal significance to him. The title “The Image of Melancholy” stems from the fact that those happen to be border- and time-transcending “sad tunes”. The result isn’t entirely genre-defying, but it is genre-overlapping in a way that is bound to involve, not scare off the lovers of each genre into which Eike crosses over: From amid a many tears and much lamenting, a musical entrée arises that causes the gently stringed music lover much rejoicing..

First appeared in AUDITORIUM.

Read more »

Iestyn Davies and Melancholia

Charles T. Downey, Countertenor Iestyn Davies and lutenist Thomas Dunford at the Kennedy Center
Washington Post, April 10, 2014

The Art of Melancholy: Songs by John Dowland, I. Davies, T. Dunford (Hyperion, 2014)

Both countertenor Iestyn Davies and lutenist Thomas Dunford have given first-rate concerts here in the last few years, the former at the Phillips Collection and the latter at the French Embassy. We have Vocal Arts DC to thank, however, for presenting the combination of the two musicians in an immaculate and affecting concert on Tuesday night in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

Davies possesses one of the most refined and lucent countertenor voices, with flawless intonation, ease and beauty across its range and not even a hint of shrillness. With his love of text, intelligent phrasing and clean but not overdone English diction, Davies is a natural match for the English Renaissance lute-song repertory, and Dunford, who has a similarly delicate approach to his instrument, matched him phrase for phrase. [Continue reading]

Iestyn Davies (countertenor) and Thomas Dunford (lute)
Vocal Arts D.C.
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater

SEE ALSO:
David Gordon Duke, The enchantment of the lute song (Edmonton Journal, April 1)

Iestyn Davies:
Midsummer Night's Dream (Metropolitan Opera, 2013)

Phillips Collection, 2011

Thomas Dunford:
La Maison Française (2011, 2012)

With William Christie, Les Arts Florissants

Thomas Dunford at the Maison Française

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

As the candidates rehearsed their cutting remarks before Tuesday night’s debate, two men shared a very different stage in the ballroom of La Maison Française: French lutenist Thomas Dunford (pictured) welcomed Iranian-French percussionist Keyvan Chemirani for an amiable encounter between musical worlds. Though Dunford headlined the evening, it was marked throughout by collaborative bonhomie. On one occasion Dunford invited Robert Aubry Davis -- who was recording the event for later broadcast on Millennium of Music -- to recite some lute-themed verses by period poets over the music, and the two shared a natural cadence. The interplay of styles and media under 23-year-old Dunford’s mellow leadership made for an unusually intimate evening.

Dunford began with a few subdued solos by English Renaissance composer John Dowland (1563–1626). Then Chemirani joined him for more Dowland and for two pieces by the German-Italian virtuoso Giovanni Geronimo Kapsperger (1580–1651), with Chemirani playing the zarb, a resonant Persian goblet drum, and the udu, an earthenware jar used in West African music. Two dazzlingly polyrhythmic solo improvisations by Chemirani rounded out the program, along with two improvised duos -- one using Baroque themes, and the other, an encore, riffing on modern styles from funk to flamenco. The combination of Dunford’s early European music with Chemirani’s world percussion sound (based in the Persian classical tradition, and also embracing African and Indian influences) was unforced and appealing, especially in the sultry groove laid down for Dowland’s Lachrimae pavane.

Dunford’s relaxed demeanor masked a formidable technique. Seemingly without effort, he elicited warm, clear-sounding tones from across the wide range of the long-necked archlute and threaded them together with a true sense of line. In faster passages, though, some notes came out choked or twangy. These rough edges -- never entirely smoothed away even by masters of the antiquated lute, which always sounds a bit muffled compared to its modern descendants -- will undoubtedly be minimized as Dunford develops his sureness of touch.

Dunford was a sensitive collaborator, picking up subtle influences from his fellow performer. He seemed at his best when improvising, employing extreme contrasts of dynamics, tempo, and range, and indulging in some satisfyingly rich, theorbo-like bass notes. As a soloist, though, he could have done more to enliven and sell the music. Fine lute playing often affects a studied languor while smoldering with rhythmic intensity beneath the surface; Dunford’s placid solos somewhat lacked this energetic underpinning. It would be nice to see his more spontaneous improvisational side unlocked in the rest of his solo work.

The next concert at La Maison Française is the long-anticipated return of pianist Alexandre Tharaud (October 26, 7:30 pm), for which no tickets remain.

Time Stands Still

Charles T. Downey, Folger Consort explores the tunes of 17th-century London
Washington Post, October 1, 2012

Dowland, The Collected Works, The Consort of Musicke, A. Rooley

The Folger Consort is presenting a musical tour of five European cities for its 35th season of concerts of early music. On Friday night, it began with a delightful survey of music in early 17th-century London, quite appropriately for a historically informed performance ensemble based at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Most of the credit for this concert’s success is due to the dulcet voice, rarefied diction, and pure intonation of tenor Aaron Sheehan. He excelled most artfully in the exquisite songs of John Dowland and Tobias Hume, accompanied simply by lute and bass viol, and in one case with choral parts sung quietly by the instrumentalists. Sheehan’s is a voice one is content to listen to all by itself, as he showed in an unaccompanied version of “The Northern Lasses Lamentation,” the most innocent of three less-than-lofty Broadside ballads. [Continue reading]

Folger Consort
With Aaron Sheehan, tenor
London: Music from the City of Shakespeare
Folger Shakespeare Library

Briefly Noted: 'Tune Thy Musicke'

Tune Thy Musicke to Thy Hart, Stile Antico, Fretwork (released on February 14, 2012) HMU 807554 | 64'45"

We have been fans of the relatively new British choral ensemble Stile Antico for some time. Their recordings have all had the two qualities we cherish in early music recordings, unusual repertoire choices in top-notch performances. The group made a noteworthy Washington debut last year and, as noted in my Season Preview, will return next spring, this time in the superior acoustic of the Library of Congress. Their new recording stays with the sort of music that is their specialty, early English polyphony, sung here with a group of just twelve voices. The ensemble's harmonious balance and immaculate vowel unity and intonation are heard in many of these pieces, many of them well worth discovering -- Robert Ramsey's How Are the Mighty Fall'n, Thomas Tallis's Purge Me, O Lord, John Amner's A Stranger Here, Giovanni Croce's From Profound Centre of my Heart (an English-language adaptation of his six-part penitential psalm setting), John Dowland's I Shame at My Unworthiness, even Thomas Campion's simple part-song Never Weather-Beaten Sail. The two selections by Thomas Tomkins, O Praise the Lord and the heart-rending When David Heard, suffer just slightly from a slight stridency of tone that pushes the group's delicate balance off-kilter. The most substantial selection, John Browne's Jesu, Mercy, How May This Be?, is a little austere and monochromatic for its length, although it sets a rather lovely rhymed devotional text.

Stile Antico, quite admirably, goes a little off its well-beaten track by partnering here with the fine viol consort Fretwork, whose recordings we have also admired. This makes possible the inclusion of some verse anthems that combine instrumental parts for viols with solo lines -- John Amner's tender Christmas scene O Ye Little Flock, William Byrd's impassioned lament Why Do I Use My Paper, Ink and Pen? (a setting of Henry Walpole's response to having saintly blood spattered on his white doublet at the brutal execution of Catholic martyr Edmund Campion), and Orlando Gibbons's See, See, the Word Is Incarnate -- as well as three settings of the In Nomine counterpoint, for viols alone. These pieces are rarely enough heard, especially the anthems with viols, that these performances are well worth hearing. As sometimes happens with choral groups who are so perfectly balanced, the solo contributions are not necessarily as beautiful, with the exception of the gorgeous high tenor voice of Benedict Hymas in the Byrd piece, one of the more exceptional works in that extraordinary composer's catalog. With such beautiful music, one hardly needs a reason to program it, but the premise presented here is as good as any. These pieces were all composed for private devotion, that is, for groups of regular Christians in their homes -- !!!! -- rather than professional choristers in chapels. Have a listen and weep for the death of musical literacy.

English Concert and Harry Bicket

Mr. Corelli in London English Concert Vivaldi, Violin Concertos, op. 4 Rachel Podger

After throwing us for a loop with an excellent recital by the Arcanto Quartet on Wednesday night, the Library of Congress followed up with a knockout punch, a stop by The English Concert on their U.S. tour. The program was a Baroque smorgasbord, a little English lute song, some Vivaldi concertos, and solo complaints by wronged women as the main courses. The ensemble hardly needs any introduction to early music lovers: their discography includes a vast number of classic recordings, some of the best early attempts to perform historical music on period instruments, under former leader Trevor Pinnock, as well as many recordings added to the list in recent years, under Andrew Manze and other directors.

Only a large handful of the musicians are on the tour, but with Harry Bicket at the keyboard and directing, it was a taut and unified performance. Violinist Rachel Podger served with panache as leader of the ensemble, playing with the bravura technique and clean tone missed at times in the solos of Chiara Banchini with Ensemble 415 last week. With a sweet sound that was laser-precise, Podger sliced her way through Vivaldi's trio sonata on the repeating bass pattern known as La Follia (op. 1/12, RV 63), which easily outclassed Ensemble 415's performance of the same piece. William Carter provided a Spanish-flavored improvisation on Baroque guitar as an introduction, setting up a performance that preserved the occasionally manic energy of "La Follia." Podger gave an even greater display of virtuosity in Vivaldi's D major violin sonata known as "Il Grosso Mogul." She treated the final solo episode of both outer movements with the freedom of a cadenza, playing with blinding speed and dazzling technical polish, while giving the enigmatic slow movement ("Recitativo: Grave") an exotic, expressive turn, responding to the tremolos and Turkish-flavored folk ensemble sound of the whole group. Cellist Jonathan Manson also had a pleasing turn in Vivaldi's C minor cello concerto, RV 401, a rather somber piece that breaks with most of the stereotypes of what to expect from a Vivaldi concerto (indeed, he did not write the same concerto 500 times).

Other Reviews: Alex Baker, English Concert at the Library of Congress (Wellsung, October 14) Andrew Lindemann Malone, Do It, England: The English Concert at the Library of Congress (DMV Classical, October 16) Joe Banno, Starry English Concert rivets with Vivaldi, Monteverdi, Handel (Washington Post, October 18)

The other guest star of this tour is the English mezzo-soprano Alice Coote, who presented much the same face for the three suffering heroines: the trope of the abandoned woman's lament, in the style of Ovid's Epistulae Heroidum, was an important one in the Baroque period. Coote's voice is a powerhouse that tended to be a little too rounded and puissant for an intimate venue and with exaggerated diction that also sounded like overkill -- both to her advantage in a place like the Metropolitan Opera, for example. The final selection, Handel's dynamic solo cantata La Lucrezia, was best suited to these qualities: the dramatic plunge to a volcanic lower range, the ornate embellishments on da capo repeats, the cleanly articulated agility of melismas, the rafter-splitting high note at the end. Coote's dramatic side served her well in Monteverdi's Lamento d'Arianna, although as essentially a long recitative, some ornamentation would have been welcome. In a set of Dowland lute songs, her voice simply seemed two or three sizes too large, and again a simpler tone (her tendency to scoop instead of hitting the pitch in the center seemed to be used as a sort of expressive device) and embellishments on the strophic repeats would have been preferred. William Carter's richly ornamented performance of Dowland's Lachrimae Pavan was the highlight of that set.

The next concert at the Library of Congress is in the same excellent vein, featuring the Talich Quartet (October 21, 8 pm) in quartets by Beethoven, Janáček, and Dvořák. Alice Coote returns to Washington next month for a recital sponsored by Vocal Arts D.C. (November 4, 7:30 pm), in a program of more recent British songs at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

Romeo and Julia Kören

Read my review published today on the Washington Post Web site:

Charles T. Downey, Rethinking early music, theatrically
Washington Post, April 15, 2010

Romeo & Julia Kören (photo courtesy of Strathmore)

Romeo och Julia Kören, an innovative vocal ensemble and theatrical troupe from Sweden, launched its first U.S. tour on Tuesday night in the Mansion at Strathmore. Founded in 1991 and based at the Royal Dramatic Theater of Stockholm, the group uses the performance of early music to weave new stories, staged mostly with pantomime, dance, and slapstick movement. As they showed in two productions, experimental theater is an ingenious way to bring largely forgotten music back to life.

The cast seemed selected more for acting ability than quality of voice, which could be disappointing for anyone familiar with the musical selections, especially in the first work, “Zefiro torna,” which stitched together nine madrigals and opera excerpts by Claudio Monteverdi. Ensemble intonation and accuracy in complicated runs, written by Monteverdi for virtuosic singers, were less than elegant in this performance by eight singing actors, a lutenist, and director Benoît Malmberg. If you let that concern go, the story of love’s travails – attraction, rejection, jealousy, despair, ecstasy – was entertaining and presented with plenty of good humor, although it occasionally undermined the tragedy of the music and its texts by juxtaposing it with comic action. [Continue reading]

Romeo & Julia Kören
Zefiro torna and Beauty and Burlesque
Launch of first U.S. tour
Mansion at Strathmore

RELATED:
Ground, American Opera Theater (Ionarts, July 1, 2006)

Banquet at the Folger

Tom Zajac (with musette)

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

The Folger Consort concluded its season of 1610 -- with a performance of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers as the centerpiece -- this weekend with a tribute to another great publication from that year (heard at the Saturday, 5 pm performance). In that year Robert Dowland, the son of lutenist and composer John Dowland, published a collection called A Musicall Banquet, which included music by his famous father, as well as other composers, including some Italian pieces in the latest Baroque style. The menu was filled out with some amuse-gueules, dances with gastronomic names from John Playford's 1651 collection The English Dancing Master. The best of these were the dances featuring the always versatile Tom Zajac, especially on the musette, or Renaissance bagpipe, like The Punchbowl and Lumps of Pudding. Zajac, who is usually credited as a multi-instrumentalist, earned his keep throughout the evening with performances on tenor recorder and various sizes of traverso, filling out parts, as well as the most virtuosic performance of the evening, his own adaptation of the divisions of Caccini's Amarilli mia bella by Jacob van Eyck. For Robert Johnson's Sir Francis Bacon's Masques, he even played both the drum and a one-handed penny whistle -- simultaneously.

The songs on the program were performed by tenor Mark Bleeke, who was at his best in comic songs like John Dowland's Fine knacks for ladies and Playford's hilariously smutty Watkins Ale, as well as more quick-paced songs that featured his voice's agile side, like Thomas Morley's See mine own sweet jewel and the charming birdsong imitations in the anonymous This merry pleasant spring. Slower songs that required a more mellifluous legato, like Dowland's Farre from triumphing court and Caccini's Amarilla mia bella, did not always suit him very well, bringing a raspy uneven sound, close to breaking at points as he seemed to pressure the sound into a smooth line. Exceptions were Dowland's gorgeous Flow, my tears, with lutenist Charles Weaver singing the bass line, and Caccini's lovely Dovrò dunque morire, with Weaver accompanying alone on therbo.

Weaver's work on lute, theorbo, and guitar was the other highlight of the concert's instrumental side, especially a sweet little anonymous piece called Rossignol (that Eisenstein did not mention the piece in his otherwise thorough program notes makes me wonder about the origin of the work), arranged for two lutes and performed with lutenist Christopher Kendall, and a quiet solo lute turn on Dowland's Lord Chamberlain's Galliard. Robert Eisenstein's audible suffering from a cold was likely the cause of a concentration lapse that set him off his violin part for a time in Giovanni Coprario's suite.

The final program of the Folger Consort's season, recently added to the calendar, may turn out to be its best: a performance of incidental music for Shakespeare's The Tempest by Matthew Locke and others (June 10 and 11), which will be accompanied by readings from the play by Derek Jacobi, Lynn Redgrave, and Richard Clifford. The ensemble has also announced its 2010-2011 season, centered on a program combining music on the theme of the seasons by Vivaldi, Christopher Simpson, and John Cage. Collaborators include Lionheart, the Augsburg Cathedral Boys' Choir, Trefoil, and soprano Jolle Greenleaf.

Emma Kirkby at NGA

On Sunday evening, early music soprano Emma Kirkby graced the National Gallery of Art’s West Garden Court with a program titled “Orpheus in England – Dowland and Purcell,” accompanied by whiz lutenist Jakob Lindberg. Both veteran stars of the historically informed performance (HIP) movement, Kirkby and Lindberg utilized discoveries in performance techniques from historical treatises to enhance or even supersede their respective musical intuitions. Rather than vibrato, Kirby makes use of resonance and abrupt curtailing of phrases for purposes of expressivity. Lindberg even performed on a lute still containing its original soundboard, from around 1590, with the wood dating from as early at 1418.

Lindberg mentioned to the audience that manuscripts of the period instruct the performer to play with the fingertips – never with the fingernails – and that those fingertips should be as soft as a “baby’s bottom.” Additionally, the performer should also put their pinkie against the soundboard to perhaps warm the tone of the instrument, leaving the player only four fingers with which to pluck. Lindberg’s solos included Dowland’s Lachrimae -- which Britten used in his work for viola -- which was slow, free, and mellow. His own arrangements for lute of six pieces by Purcell included A New Irish Measure, which had a tune that may now be a Christmas carol; A New Ground, which had a theme that wound lower and lower; and A New Scottish Measure with its flavors of “Loch Lomond.” It is difficult to describe the beauty of Lindberg’s sound beyond it sounding of something between the quietness of a clavichord and sweetness of the harp.

Seated next to Lindberg, Kirkby sang from memory, with meticulously manipulated breath support and diction, gently serenading the audience through about twenty songs that touched upon human themes of love, things “Sweeter than Roses,” and even one song that courted death. Clever texts argued that “tis true you worthy be, yet without love nought worth to me.” What a Sad Fate Is Mine, by an anonymous poet set by Purcell goes as follows:

Other Reviews: Joe Banno, Emma Kirkby's delicate and delightful recital (Washington Post, October 27)

My love is my crime;
Or why should he be,
More easy and free
To all than to me?

But if by disdain
He can lessen my pain,
‘Tis all I implore,
To make me love less,
Or himself to love more.

Kirkby, with the help of “English Orfeuses” Dowland and Purcell, brought the texts alive by singing with unpredictable freedom and ornamental agility. Reasonable tempos assisted in facilitating this ornate level of detail given to every phrase. Closing the magical program, Kirkby stood for Purcell’s well-known Music for a While, which featured painted staccato notes on the word “drop” and a melancholic ground bass throughout that ascends chromatically.

The series of fine free concerts at the National Gallery of Art continues this week with a concert of Couperin and Rameau by an ensemble called Masques on Wednesday (October, 12:10 pm, in the West Building's ground floor Lecture Hall) and Till Fellner's fourth concert in his Beethoven piano sonata cycle (November 1, 6:30 pm).

American Opera Theater and the Pilgrims

Read my review today on the Washington Post Web site:

Charles T. Downey, American Opera Theater Offers "Solace" at Artscape
Washington Post, July 21, 2009

On Sunday, amid the zany chaos of Artscape, Baltimore's wide-ranging free arts festival, American Opera Theater presented "A Pilgrime's Solace," a dozen of John Dowland's gorgeous lute songs, in a sort of pantomimed recital at Corpus Christi Church. AOT Artistic Director Timothy Nelson credits the genesis of the idea to the cage-rattling director Peter Sellars, whom he met at Santa Fe Opera last summer, during the American premiere of Kaija Saariaho's "Adriana Mater." [Continue reading]

A Pilgrime's Solace (songs by John Dowland)
Monica Reinagel, mezzo-soprano
Timothy Nelson, director
American Opera Theater
Corpus Christi Church, Artscape

Previously from American Opera Theater:
Cabaret de Carmen | David et Jonathas | Messiah | Acis and Galatea | La Didone | Ground

Phantasticke Spirites

Read my review on the Washington Post Web site:

Charles T. Downey, Elizabethan Music Performed Largely Harmoniously
Washington Post, June 8, 2009

Harmonious Blacksmith, Phantasticke Spirites
Music by Dowland, Weelkes, Bull, Byrd, others
Hand Chapel
George Washington University, Mount Vernon Campus

Crystal Tears

Crystal Tears, A. Scholl, Concerto di Viole, J. Behr (released June 10, 2008) Harmonia Mundi HMC 901993

John Dowland (1563-1626) and other composers of the late English Renaissance are in the air (haha) at the moment. Not only have we reviewed solo albums by Mark Padmore and -- how could we forget? -- Sting, we have heard live concerts of this music by Ellen Hargis and Paul O'Dette, the Folger Consort, and Hopkinson Smith. Now Harmonia Mundi's favorite countertenor, Andreas Scholl, has gotten in on the act, after solo and duet Handel albums in the last couple years. The generous program highlights a set of Dowland songs, accompanied by combinations of lute and viols, surrounded by other contemporary songs and lute or viol consort pieces by John Ward, Robert Johnson, William Byrd, John Bennet, Patrick Mando, and Richard Mico. Scholl collaborates with a group of historically informed performance (HIP) specialists: the young lutenist Julian Behr (a student of Hopkinson Smith in Basel, among others) and Concerto di Viole, all of whom studied at Basel.

The sound is luscious and intimate, with a natural ease of push and pull among the performers, making it a worthy release. One thing that makes it not essential is that English is noticeably not Scholl's native language, and Mark Padmore's exquisite pronunciation was one of the strengths of his recording. The problem in Scholl's recording is so acute that it is often hard to understand what he is singing without reading the words. Even so, the sound is so ravishing in a song like Have You Seen the Bright Lily Grow, that one can forgive the strange pronunciation of phrases like "the bog [bag] off [of] the bee." Even Sting's somewhat idiosyncratic pronunciation was better, although he came nowhere close to Scholl in milking all of the douceur from this exquisite little song. (Scholl's recently re-released disc of German cantatas would surely have the same kind of linguistic advantage, in German, although I have yet to hear it.)

In the album's oddest choice, Scholl first whistles the refrain of Bennet's Venus' Birds before singing it, even cheesily ornamenting the whistling a second time. It goes with the sort of breezy mode of performance -- some friends sitting around the score -- but the producer should have insisted on getting a recorder player. A DVD extra (not all that interesting but free) includes some footage of the recording process, along with Scholl speaking about his history with the music of Dowland. There is also a video of the recording of Venus' Birds, embedded below, where you can see Scholl singing and ... whistling.

79'32"


Andreas Scholl, Venus' Birds (John Bennet)

Mark Padmore's Dowland Songs

Dowland, Lute Songs / Britten, Nocturnal after John Dowland, Mark Padmore, Elizabeth Kenny, Craig Ogden (released January 8, 2008) Hyperion CDA67648

This new release from Hyperion is the perfect antidote for the serious listener turned off by Sting's crossover expedition into the Dowland lute songs. What was charitably described here as "not an ideal version of Dowland's music" some decried as mass audience pablum, and with some reason. That type of listener may want to consider this CD as a follow-up gift for that classical-shy someone who enjoyed Sting's Labyrinth, an enticement along the path to the dark side. Considering my recent praise of Mark Padmore's new Handel, it is no surprise that his performance of this baker's dozen of delectable lute songs should get a recommendation. Not least because it presents not only the lachrymose Dowland but the randy, witty Dowland ("Her eye commands, her heart saith No. / No, no, no, and only no! / One No another still doth follow").

Here are all the things that, for better or worse, were missing from Sting's version: exquisite diction, studied and pure pronunciation, warm and burnished vocal tone, endless breath support. The incredibly long note at the end of Sorrow, stay! will take your breath away, although Padmore sounds like he had some left over. Elizabeth Kenny, a distinguished lutenist who is heard frequently with Les Arts Florissants and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, is a sensitive partner, allowing Padmore to anchor the ends of phrases, add rhythmic touches to important words, and treat repeated phrases with an eye toward variation. She also contributes three solo pieces, including one of the fantasias from Dowland's collection of études.

The warm sound, captured in London's All Saints Church (East Finchley), renders the fragility of the genre, music that is meant to be heard from as close as possible, without introducing too much distracting detail. As a companion piece, guitarist Chris Ogden also performs Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal after John Dowland, op. 70, composed for Julian Bream to play at the 1964 Aldeburgh Festival. It is a marvel to hear the opening measures of this work directly after the Dowland song that inspired it, Come, heavy Sleep. The bitonal -- really pretonal -- harmonic mixture of the song is distorted and exploded by Britten in the first movement and throughout the series of contrasting affects, leading to a hazy restatement of Dowland's gorgeous original at the end.

"I did but tell her she mistook her frets": Shakespeare and the Lute

Every cultural institution in the city will be taking part in the Kennedy Center's new festival, Shakespeare in Washington (the Folger Consort, reviewed earlier this month, already got into the game). It will continue through June, and by the end of it, dedicated concert-goers will probably have heard every piece that could conceivably be connected to the Bard, probably more than once. On Sunday, the National Gallery of Art inaugurated a series of three concerts for the festival in its Sunday free concert series.

Two legends of the American early music scene, soprano Ellen Hargis and lutenist Paul O'Dette, gave a recital called Shakespeare's Songbook. As described by Hargis from the stage, the concept was to combine pieces actually sung or even just referenced in the plays of Shakespeare with some of the greatest hits of his lifetime, what she called "the playlist from Shakespeare's iPod." She also acknowledged that Prof. Ross Duffin (Case Western Reserve University, where Hargis also teaches) deserves part of the credit for the program. (Hooray, Musicology!)

As expected, this was an excellent recital, although the odd acoustic of the West Building's West Garden Court did not favor the delicate style of this repertoire. From a seat very close to the performers, I could hear every note O'Dette plucked and all of the nuances and crisp diction of Hargis's performance. However, audience members farther back, in spite of the use of an acoustical shell, were not so lucky. The program included a few anonymous pieces for lute alone, as well as four selections for the cittern, a jangly banjo-like instrument that finds its echo in Appalachia. There was only one piece by John Dowland, the only musician to be named in the works of Shakespeare (apparently no longer attributed to him, however):

Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch
Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;

(from The Passionate Pilgrim)

Some of the highlights included a full rendition of all 18 verses of the famous tune Greensleeves, mentioned by Mistress Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor. It is a lover's complaint, made by a man who has spent considerable sums of money on clothing and "all this geare" for a woman who does not even love him. (By legend, the poem was composed by Henry VIII in reference to Anne Boleyn. It was the focus of the Folger Consort's Christmas concert, reviewed last month.) Some of the songs were of lesser quality but of great historical interest, like the anonymous ballad that compressed the entire plot of King Lear into a set of stanzas and the descriptive battle ballad My Lord Willoughby's Welcome Home.

Other Reviews: Stephen Brookes, Hargis and O'Dette (Washington Post, January 16)

The most famous pieces were performed in memorable ways, like Thomas Morley's exquisite song O Mistresse Mine, which Shakespeare had sung (in an unspecified version) in Twelfth Night, sung by Hargis with her startling pure voice and a seductively gentle tempo. In Robert Johnson's Full Fathom Five from The Tempest, her evocative "Ding dong" refrain rang out with bell-like clarity and fade. The best of all was the anonymous O Death, Rock Me Asleep, a heart-rending lament over a rocking triple-meter ostinato, again often thought to be associated with Anne Boleyn, in this case while she was in prison. This was a superb concert, heard by a large and appreciative audience. Those that follow it in the National Gallery's Shakespeare series will be greeted with high expectations.

The second concert in the Shakespeare series at the National Gallery will feature the Baltimore Consort (January 21, 6:30 pm). Only a few pieces on the program overlap with this concert. No tickets are required, but arrive early to get a good seat.

For a concert quite like this one, also free, go hear mezzo-soprano Barbara Hollinshead and lutenist Howard Bass this evening (January 16, 6 pm) at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. This program, Songs from Shakespeare's Troupe, will also be broadcast live on the Internet.

Folger Consort's Music for Shakespeare

Last night, the Folger Consort continued its New Year's tradition by presenting an excellent concert, The Elizabethan Muse, in the glorious space of Washington National Cathedral (the site of President Ford's memorial service a few days earlier). This concert is officially part of the city-wide cultural festival Shakespeare in Washington, in that it featured music by the greatest composers contemporary with the Bard (1564-1616) -- John Dowland (1563-1626) and William Byrd (c. 1540-1623). However, the programming was just as much concerned with the music of the season, the end of Christmastide, continuing themes examined in the Folger Consort's excellent Christmas concert, Greensleeves (reviewed last month).

As usual, there were selections for instruments only, with four string players joining the group's artistic directors, violinist Robert Eisenstein and lutenist Christopher Kendall. The best pieces were in the final set, especially an arrangement of a popular tune, Barley break, in a sort of variation set adapted from the work of William Byrd. Eisenstein's meticulous program notes describe Barley Break as "a game, sort of a 16th-century Spin-the-bottle," but if there were words to a tune with that name, they do not survive. The losers of this game ended up "in Hell" together and had to kiss: Robert Herrick did not think the punishment was so bad, in a little poem he wrote about it. Because it was originally a game that took place in a field, it reminds me of a French song, not melodically related to the tune set by Byrd as far as I could tell, Pilons l'orge (Let's beat the barley), which uses the same metaphor for sexual union.

Other secular songs were selected because characters in Shakespeare's plays sing or refer to them. Soprano Jacqueline Horner (of Anonymous 4) sang The Broom, a song mentioned in Two Noble Kinsmen and popular enough still to turn up in John Gay's The Beggar's Opera in the 18th century. Her performance was a little monochromatic by comparison to baritone Gabriel Crouch's rendition of Carman's Whistle, mentioned by Falstaff, which had charming recorder ritornelli interjected by Eisenstein. The loveliest performance in this genre came from the three male singers (Crouch, tenor Philip Cave, and countertenor Steven Rickards) in Ah, Robin, a song by William Cornysh that Shakespeare has Feste sing in Twelfth Night. All of these popular songs are questionable at best as far as being appropriate for performance in the crossing of a cathedral. We must remember, however, that this is the Episcopalian Church, where anything goes, and that does mean anything. Really, if you feel it's right, it's right. (For the irony impaired, I'm only joking.)

The five singers are members of a new group called Accordia, formed by Philip Cave, who now lives in the Washington area. The balance favored the baritone voice too much, especially in the first half, leaving the countertenor almost completely covered. Horner's voice tended to dominate the other soprano, Sally Dunkley. On a few of the unaccompanied choral pieces, their sound gelled the best: the lovely motet O admirabile commercium and the melancholy Holy Innocents anthem Lullaby, My Sweet Little Baby. In the latter piece, Dunkley and Rickards exchanged positions, with good auditory results for some reason. The cross-relation that occurs at the final cadence was deliciously placed. At least some members of the audience must have recognized several of the instrumental pieces as "that music that Sting sang." Several of the Dowland dance pieces were fine, especially Sir Henry Umpton's Funerall and Mrs. Nichol's Almand. Catch this program tonight, if you can.

The Folger consort will repeat The Elizabethan Muse this evening (January 6, 8 pm) at National Cathedral.

Hopkinson Smith at Dumbarton Oaks

The Friends of Music concert series at Dumbarton Oaks offers a little banquet for the ears of its small group of subscribers once a month. Last night, it was lutenist Hopkinson Smith, who played a program of solo lute music by Francesco da Milano (1497-1543) and John Dowland (1563-1626). The normal venue for this excellent series, the Music Room, has been closed during the renovations of the Georgetown estate of Mildred and Robert Bliss, but the temporary digs in the refectory of the one-time Director's House are intimate and lovely. Seated a few feet from the warm bodies of the audience and in front of a drafty pair of French doors, tuning was, as Smith admitted, an issue. As a result, he tuned extensively between each set, often improvising or playing brief sections of the next piece on his stand. The results were excellent listening indeed.

Smith may be the most famous lutenist in the world, if such a title is even relevant, having been a celebrated teacher at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel and having played far and wide, even on NPR (you can hear him playing pieces by Luis Milan at their Web site). However, now that Edin Karamazov has made an album with Sting, Smith may have to take second place. Much like the lute itself, Smith's performing demeanor was understated and gentle, a slight form in a tan suit, gray-tinged hair, and professorial spectacles. The lute's sound is so delicate, almost spectral, but when played well it can sound two, three, or four contrapuntal voices quite distinctly: at one point, Smith used the thumb of his right hand to pluck out a bass melody on the lower strings under higher chords. However, if you push the sound too hard, the lute will growl or sound scratchy, but with Smith that happens very rarely.

Hopkinson Smith: Dowland: A Dream (2005) Bach: Sonatas and Partitas (2000) Sylvius Leopold Weiss (1993)

In a low-key didactic mode, Smith gave wry, thoughtful program notes before most of the sets of pieces. The program featured music by Dowland, mostly dance forms made into character pieces describing people in the composer's life, works that Smith has recently recorded for his 2005 Dowland CD. He is probably tired of people asking him about how Sting "discovered" John Dowland, but actually Sting's Dowland CD paired with Smith's would make a very nice Christmas present. Highlights included the sweet, dancelike, triple-meter Mrs. White's Nothing, the gorgeous Pavin la Mia Barbara (made while Dowland was working in Germany, named for an unknown Barbara, and notated only in a German manuscript), and the galliard in honor of The Most High and Mightie Christianus the Fourth King of Denmarke (composed during Dowland's stay in Denmark). Smith informed us that he played versions of the famous Lachrimae Pavin and Lady Hunsdon's Allemande from an appropriate source, the Dowland Lute Book, a manuscript now conserved in Washington's own Folger Shakespeare Library.

Providing a contrast to the more proto-tonal harmony of Dowland's music were selections, mostly fantasias and a few dance pieces, by Francesco da Milano, lutenist at the papal court in Rome. Although Francesco died only 20 years before Dowland was born, his music sounds much more modal in character, and he preferred to write down mostly his more serious and abstract fantasias. Hopkinson Smith has attempted to recreate some sense of Francesco's lauded improvisations on dance themes, pieces he called self-deprecatingly, "my own kind of concoction -- composition would be too good a word." Of special interest were the Fantasia no. 40 dal sesto tono, a fast and quirky exercise in contrapuntal imitation, and the melancholy Fantasia no. 33 sopra mi-fa-mi, in which that simple half-step theme (mi-fa-mi) is woven into a complex and enigmatic puzzle. As far as I can determine, Smith has not made a Francesco recording, but on the basis of these performances, I hope he does soon.

This program will be repeated this evening (November 4, 8 pm) and Sunday evening (November 5, 7 pm). Hopkinson Smith has two more concert appearances scheduled this month in the United States -- Pittsburgh State University in Pittsburgh, Kans. (November 9) and Brisbane, Calif. (November 11 and 12). The next concert on the Friends of Music series at Dumbarton Oaks will feature the Turtle Island String Quartet in the December Solstice Concert on December 8, 9, and 10.

Sting Sings Dowland

Available at Amazon: Sting, Songs from the Labyrinth, Edin Karamazov (released on October 10, 2006)

Where does modern pop music fit into music history? In a sense, that staple of the pop singer, the love song in its thousands of permutations, is as old as the hills, as is the concept of a singer accompanying himself with a simple instrumental part while he sings a love song. Whether it is a guitar or a lute and no matter the musical style, the rules are remarkably similar. Once you get past the language issues and the changes in society governing courtship, troubadour songs in Occitan, French or English lute songs, German Lieder, and, say, a song by Sting have more in common than you might think. So, in his new CD, Songs from the Labyrinth, Sting sings a few of Elizabethan composer John Dowland's lute songs and even plays the lute on two of the tracks.

Other Reviews: Chris Pasles, Sting's only in it for the lute (Los Angeles Times, October 17) Martin Hodgson, Sting plucks lute composer from obscurity (The Independent, October 16) Elizabeth Blair, Sting's 'Labyrinth': 16th Century Pop Music (NPR, October 16) Jessica Duchen, Hooked on classics: Rock stars who attempt the crossover (The Independent, October 16) Sting's Journey Through History (CBS News, October 15) Elysa Gardiner, Sting's 'Labyrinth' mines the oldies — from the 1600s (USA Today, October 4)

Having been in high school in the mid-1980s, I have a natural appreciation for Sting's voice. Even so, my estimation of him has risen several degrees because of this album. It was interesting that the members of the American Musicological Society discussed this new album last week, as people processed the media flurry that accompanied the CD's release. New recordings do not get discussed in that forum all that often, but musicologists are thrilled whenever historical music intersects with the mainstream media. One professor substituted a Sting track on his "drop-the-needle" exam, instead of the performance from the anthology he had played in class, but was disappointed that the students did not even notice. It turns out that students in college in 2006 are too young to have a connection to Sting. He is just some old dude singing music by an even older dude.

Even so, the effect of seeing anyone on a commercial television network singing the lute songs of John Dowland and playing the lute cannot be overestimated. Dowland's music, of stunning melodic beauty and facility, hardly needs an advocate among informed listeners. It must be said that, purely in terms of a performance, this is not an ideal version of Dowland's music, but its beauty and Sting's name appeal will do much to bring some much-needed variety to the ears of musically impoverished listeners. Some moments are both impressive and kind of silly, such as hearing Sting's multiphonic voice singing all four parts of some of the polyphonic arrangements simultaneously (Can she excuse my wrongs).

Certainly, such tender, fragile moments as the refrain of Have you seen the bright lily grow (you can listen to that track, by Robert Johnson and not Dowland, here) and Weep you no more, sad fountains make this disc very easy on the ears. Sarajevo-born lutenist Edin Karamazov, the midwife of this recording, plays with impressive grace. I wish the duo had selected more Dowland songs, instead of filling the time with readings from John Dowland's 1595 letter to Sir Robert Cecil. At just under 50 minutes, even at the reduced price now offered by Amazon, this disc is not essential for the serious classical listener. However, it will make an excellent gift for that person in your life who needs a sympathetic introduction to the wealth of historical music.

Washingtonians have a chance to hear some lute music by John Dowland (and Francesco da Milano) in two weeks, when lutenist Hopkinson Smith plays on the Friends of Music concert series at Dumbarton Oaks (November 3 and 4, 8 pm; November 5, 7 pm).

UPDATE:
Other blog responses from On an Overgrown Path and The Rambler.