Bartoli cancels Barbican recital

Cecilia Bartoli was to have been performing at the Barbican this Friday in an all Handel evening.  However today it was annnounced this would be cancelled:

'We regret that Cecilia Bartoli is suffering from a very heavy cold, and is deeply sorry that she has to cancel this concert.'

Cecilia Bartoli

Words to say how words fail

John Dowland (1563 - 1626)

Praeludium

All ye whom love or fortune hath betrayed
A fancy
Behold a wonder here

Come away, come sweet love;

Mrs Winter’s Jump
Time stands still

Fortune
My thoughts are winged with hopes

Say, love if ever thou didst find

I saw my Lady weep

Flow my tears

Sorrow, stay, lend true repentant tears

Shall I strive with words to move

The King of Denmark, his Galliard

Can she excuse my wrongs

In darkness let me dwell

XV. Semper Dowland semper dolens

Go, crystal tears

Come again! Sweet love doth now invite

Now, O now I needs must part

Iestyn Davies countertenor 
Thomas Dunford lute 
Colin Hurley speaker

Wigmore Hall, London, 10 November 2016
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A masterpiece of programming, Iestyn Davies devised a beautifully paced evening of John Dowland's 16th century melancholy.

Iestyn Davies

The leavening of the songs with solos for lute is commonplace enough, but here further contrast was added by Colin Hurley's recital of poetry, Dowland's letters and even an excerpt from Tolstoy's short story The Kreutzer Sonata.  Hurley strongly projected his texts, even if he seemed to ham up some of Dowland's uncertainty a little too much in the letters.

This all allowed each song to shine like the precious jewels they are, and also some beautiful melding of lute solo into song. Davies presented the evening as illustrating a man "seeking to find words to say how words fail".

Thomas Dunford

Dowland does remain something of a paradox.  Acknowledged as a master of his art in Elizabethan England, he was not taken on by the music-loving monarch.  His Catholicism for a Protestant court can't be the full explanation when this was also true of William Byrd.  As it was, he had to join the court of King Christian in Denmark before returning as court musician for James I.

Thomas Dunford's lute was unfailingly sensitive, remaining at the introspective end of the spectrum even in more courtly items such as the King of Denmark's Galliard.  Iestyn Davies was in fine voice, with strong tone through his range and wonderfully clear diction.  Almost impercetibly tension and emotion were built through the first half to set up ideally the final paring of Flow, my tears and Sorrow, stay.  
  

Alas I am condemned ever,

No hope, no help there doth remain,

But down, down, down, down I fall,

Down and arise I never shall.

Not a happy man.

Orlando Gibbons - English Renaissance master

Orlando Gibbons
Selection of Fantasies a 2, a 3, a 4 and a 6
Selection of In Nomines
The hunt’s up (Peascod time)
Pavan and galliard Lord Salisbury
The silver swanne
Pavan and galliard a 6
Go from my window
O Lord, in thy wrath rebuke me not
Hosanna to the Son of David 
  
Phantasm 
Laurence Dreyfus treble viol, director 
Emilia Benjamin treble viol 
Jonathan Manson treble viol 
Mikko Perkola tenor viol 
Markku Luolajan-Mikkola bass viol

Wigmore Hall, London, 24 October 2016
*****************

Orlando Gibbons was famously championed by eccentric Canadian pianist Glenn Gould.  For Gould, Gibbons and Wagner sat alongside eachother in their ability to make the spine tingle with "intensity and predictability".

Perhaps Beethoven and his late string quartets is the better comparison, for Gibbons had a genius for contrapuntal writing, wrote in an equivalent medium, and a consort of viols revealed itself to be as supple, fluid and beguiling as a string quartet.

Phantasm

Starting with two viols, more were added until we reached an impressive first half climax with Three Fantasias a 6.  With Phantasm as our guide, we were drawn into the counterpoint, moments of moonlit stasis, and the constantly shifting patterns of melody.

No-one ever said period instruments were good at staying in tune.  10 of the 100 minutes of music consisted of long tuning sessions between sets of pieces.   Thankfully even this could be enjoyed for the sheer beauty of sound these viols produced.

The introduction of more melody-led items such as The Silver Swanne towards the end demonstrated the more extrovert character of some of Gibbons' pieces.  But it was the extended ruminations of the Fantasias that stayed in the memory.  Distant reminders of the extraordinary achievement of English music in the Renaissance.