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This excellent new Harmonia Mundi release of music for viols played by Fretwork couples the loan voices of Jewish composers of the Tudor and Stuart courts with a distinctive contemporary voice. Although Jews were banished by edict from England in 1290 a presence remained in the form of marranos, or nominally converted 'New Christians', who traded between London, Antwerp and Lisbon. The practice of tolerating covert followers of the Jewish faith was further reinforced when Henry VIII recruited Venetian musicians from the Italian diaspora to form six-part consorts for his Private Music.
The Venetian composers of the music on this CD for viols from the Duarte, Lupo and Bassano families are now thought to have been Jewish. Their music from the Tudor and Stuart courts is interspersed in true mixing-it style with the three movements of contemporary composer Orlando Gough's klezmer-based Birds on Fire. Particularly noteworthy are the Two Sinfonias in 5 parts by Leonora Duarte, it is not often you come across women composers of the 17th century.
This is an imaginative mixture of ancient and modern in a rewarding seventy-five minute programe. Fretwork, as ever, produce a wonderful tone coupled with bouncy articulation in the klezmer rhythms, all captured in beautiful sound by Adrian Hunter. But just as Henry VIII's private musicians hid their true identity so does this fine CD. The cover (above) proclaims Production USA despite being recorded in darkest Suffolk and Deptford, England.
In a neat piece of synchronicity I bought Birds on Fire while reading a very thought-provoking novel about the conundrum of Jewishness. American author Ellen Feldman has made something of a speciality of mixing fact with fiction in her novels and I first came across her work in Scottsboro which is a fictional elaboration of the notorious trial of the same name. I must say I approached her earlier novel The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank with some trepidation but the cheesy-sounding sounding title fails to do justice to this thoughtful book.
As readers of Anne Frank's diary will know her companion in the secret annex in Amsterdam, Peter van Pels, also perished in a concentration camp after their discovery. But The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank re-engineers fact and in the novel van Pels survives and builds a successful career and marriage in America. The conundrum of Jewishness is the central theme but there are also very convincing descriptions of the blackness into which the marginalised can descend. Some of the most thought-provoking and moving fiction I have read for some time. The closing lines of the novel say it all - 'My God, have they no memory?'
Speaking of which, now I propose to tell you of Buchenwald ...
Lone voices showcases music not featured in the 2008 BBC Proms, discover more lone voices here. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Three wonderful concerts in just over a week left me wondering how long is long enough? At Norwich Cathedral last Friday Stephen Layton with Polyphony, Trinity College Choir and the Britten Sinfonia offered a concert of glorious Poulenc and Messiaen lasting 64 minutes excluding the interval. The second half comprised just the Poulenc Gloria, which lasted 27 minutes. The duration of 64 minutes is, of course, the length of a CD, which is no coincidence as the programme will be recorded by Hyperion in the next few days for future CD release.
But 27 minutes doesn't take my prize for the shortest programme half. Just eight days before at Snape, the up and coming Russian Alexander Polianichko conducted the Britten Pears Orchestra in a stunning second half of just the 1919 version of Stravinsky's Firebird. Now at little over 20 minutes that takes my prize for the shortest ever programme half. Can any readers beat it?
Just hours after the fleeting Firebird we experienced programme planning going too far the other way at nearby Blythburgh Church. Now this is a very famous venue, not the least for Benjamin Britten's performances which I wrote about here. Blythburgh is a glorious church with glorious acoustics, but it does have its problems as a concert venue. There are no, what they call at Disney Hall, amenities. The car park is a grass field which becomes a bog in wet weather. And the rest rooms, as they call them over on Sequenza21, are two agricutural sheds down a grass slope at the rear of the church. But the fact that that Ben and Peter used these very urinals gives a whole new meaning to the word resonance.
To historic Blythburgh and its agricultural amenities came the brilliant young vocal group Exaudi (who featured in my Elisabeth Lutyens article) and viol consort Fretwork with a suitably sombre programme of sacred music for the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Day. Now Good Friday is a fine time to do penance. But twelve o'clock on a Saturday is not so good for 90 minutes of Christian Geist, Heinrich Schütz and Arvo Pärt (his exquisite Stabat Mater in the arrangement by Macolm Bruno for viols) without an interval.
As the excellent performance progressed it was clear that the great and good among the Aldeburgh Easter Festival goers had booked lunch in nearby Southwold's trendy restaurants. In order not to lose their tables the audience was slowly slipping away, just like the North Sea tide that you see in my accompanying photos. Exaudi's young director, James Weeks, rose to the occasion like a true professional, and announced that the eight verses of Christian Geist's Es war aber would be truncated to two in the interests of gastronomy, and we were released into the glorious Easter sunshine with Schütz's mercifully short motet Die mit Tränen säen ringing in our ears.
But this Overgrown Path has a happy ending. We would never leave a concert early for something as mundane as a restaurant booking. After relishing the superb Blythburgh concert to its proper conclusion we enjoyed our tasty picnic (and just a little wine) at nearby Aldeburgh. The photos of Iken Church (the village of Iken is the setting for Britten's The Little Sweep) and the Alde estuary which accompany this article were taken near our picnic site. With views like this long can never be long enough.
Now talking of sacred music, read about L'Orgue Mystique
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
