[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he discovery of Telemann’s long-lost fantasias for viola da gamba is one of the great musicological events of recent times. But this music brings joy not just to scholars and players: it is also most attractive for those of us who ‘only’ listen. As always, Telemann writes with idiomatic flair for the instrument, making use of chords and changes of register to enrich what is, inevitably and for the most part, single-line music. And in Robert Smith he has an eloquent advocate – even in tone, sure in the judgment of pace and space, and technically adroit in music that is not without technical challenges, even if was written for the amateur market of the day. The recording venue (a small church) gives the sound just the right amount of bloom and the player’s note (in English only) neatly summarise both the music’s content and context. A release both welcome and exciting.
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De Lalande: Grands motets
[Emmanuelle De Negri soprano, Dagmar Šašková soprano, Sean Clayton haute-contre, Cyril Auvity tenor, Andre Morsch basse], Ensemble Aedes, Le Poème Harmonique, Vincent Dumestre
74:32
Alpha 968
[dropcap]F[/dropcap]ew composers of grands motets did grand with quite the instinct for brilliance of Michel-Richard de Lalande. Even in these relatively early works he displays a sure structural hand as solo récits, ensembles and grand choruses succeed each other in subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) praise to and of kings both divine and earthly. The performing forces are large, though not implausibly so, and the orchestral strings correctly distributed across a single violin line above three viola voices and the basses de violon. Splendid though the two shorter pieces are, they are inevitably over-shadowed by the powerhouse that is the Te Deum – core repertoire at the Concert Spirituel as well as at court – in which the choral writing reminded me more than once of Handel in ceremonial mode. As usual I wish that the lady soloists could display a little more care over their use of vibrato but the gentlemen are splendid, especially in ensemble. I have in the past found this director a little free-and-easy in matters of performance practice in earlier music and here, too, this is a bit of an issue. I just don’t believe that Lalande ever deployed recorders at the pitch we hear at the opening of the Te Deum. They really don’t add further lustre to what is already a colourful sound: it’s just an annoying squeak to me. But as with pretty much any Lalande programme there is much here that both impresses and gives joy. The booklet offers Fre/Eng/Ger essays but the sung Latin texts are translated into Eng/Fre only.
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Richard Egarr harpsichord
62:59
Linn Records CKD518
[dropcap]T[dropcap]he versatile musician Richard Egarr contributes to what is something of a succession of distinguished recordings devoted to keyboard music by Byrd. Only Pavana Lachrymae and the Praeludium and Fancie overlap with the selection on Colin Tilney’s choice of Byrd which I reviewed only recently for EMR. The disc under review here is another well-chosen anthology, wandering slightly further off piste than Tilney in including the exquisite pavan and galliard pair in A minor, BK 16. Here, the good news is that, notwithstanding Egarr’s assertion in his booklet notes that the attribution is insecure, on the contrary the attribution is as safe as it can be for a piece from this period that does not survive in a source directly connected to the composer: both independent sources give Byrd as the composer, and Egarr seems simply to have misinterpreted a passage in an article by David Schulenberg (“The keyboard works of William Byrd, Musica disciplina 47 (1993): 99-121, esp. p. 103); or, he has relied upon the first edition of Alan Brown’s William Byrd: keyboard music (1969) which was published before Robert Pacey’s discovery of the second independent corroborative source (1985) duly noted by Brown in subsequent editions (1985 revised reprint of 2nd ed.; 3rd ed., 1999). That said, Egarr delivers a fine rendition of this exquisite piece, highlighting the poignant opening strain of the pavan and the songlike opening strain of the galliard, epitomizing his performances of most of the rest of the contents of this disc.
Indeed, it is clear from reading his notes that this recording is a labour of love for Richard Egarr. He has already recorded the complete works for harpsichord by Louis Couperin, the French composer most worthy of being named in the same sentence as Byrd. On this occasion he has not sought to emulate Davitt Moroney again, but has focused on a dozen or so works by Byrd that seem to have particular resonances for him.
That said, it is perhaps just as well that he has limited himself to the one disc. Throughout the seven discs of Moroney’s boxed set, there are no quirky interpretations, besides an occasional flourish and the error of judgment over the choice of organ for most of the third disc; even here his interpretations manage usually to transcend the acoustic and other obstacles. Egarr’s disc is one of the best of its type, and comfortably takes its place among the stream of such recent distinguished recordings mentioned at the beginning of this review, but it is bookended by two distinctly quirky interpretations, a quirkiness which, if reproduced proportionally over the course of a boxed set containing over a hundred pieces, might well become irksome.
The first pair of pieces is the Prelude and Fantasia in a, BK 12-13. I would put the Fantasia forward as the first indisputable masterpiece of European keyboard music. Byrd’s control over his almost riotous creativity is remarkable, with a succession of polyphony, homophony, varied tempi, sometimes almost anarchic rhythm, memorable melody and striking harmony are all rolled into a work that can be melancholy and buoyant with everything in between. How to approach such a work? Some performers rely simply on the note values and time signatures; others roll with them and respond in ways that are at best subtle but that can seem exaggerated. At first I felt that Egarr had overdone his response and entered the realm of exaggeration. Listening again after having heard the rest of the disc, I felt that it is perhaps more an expression of sheer enthusiasm, responding to Byrd’s own creativity; if after the first hearing I felt something like exhaustion, after the second I felt something more like stimulation. Egarr certainly sets out his stall here. On a less subjective note, he observes the repeat at bars 58-61 from the presumably authoritative source copied by Byrd’s pupil Tomkins; this is not given by Francis Tregian in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.
Thereafter matters become more grounded. This is an appalling pun as, after another Prelude, BK 1, Egarr plays two of Byrd’s “short” Grounds, BK 9 and 43. These are given performances whose lyricism belies the stark titles. It would be interesting to ponder the point in discographical history at which interpretations of this sort of work ceased suggesting that you might not like this sort of work but it is good for you, and started to proclaim the wonders of works which might have dull titles but were conversely beautiful. The conclusion of BK 9 is quite exquisite in Egarr’s hands.
And, speaking of dull titles, they do not come more dull than Ut re mi fa sol la and Ut mi re. Yet the former is one of Byrd’s most radiant pieces, with the latter tagging along not far behind. Original sources make it clear that the second piece should be played immediately after the first, making for a substantial musical edifice. Although Moroney’s performance of Ut re mi fa sol la on the organ is one of the triumphs of his boxed set – and indeed of the entire Byrd discography, notwithstanding the unwise choice of instrument and acoustic – Egarr coaxes his harpsichord to come as close as the instrument can to emulating what can be achieved on the organ by a gifted player. Undeterred by the constraints of his cantus firmus, Byrd produces a work as full of vitality as the Fantasia BK 13, and Egarr maintains an irresistible momentum through Byrd’s rhythmic and metrical adventures, revealing with clarity his counterpoint even in passages low in the registers such as at bars 48-49 while giving due dramatic emphasis to the sudden change from major to minor at bar 75. Egarr also gives the lie to Oliver Neighbour’s dismissal of Ut mi re which is admittedly not as fine a piece as its partner, but nonetheless has much to offer.
It is also a pleasure to welcome the Fantasia BK 62, Byrd’s longest essay in the genre, which seemingly made some impact in its day as both Peter Philips and Pierre Cornet subsequently used the same initial theme for their own fantasias. Egarr’s sympathetic but not indulgent treatment of the Pavana Lachrymae reflects Byrd’s own evident admiration for Dowland’s piece – one has only to listen to the passionate scalar passages in the final strain – and after another Prelude, BK 24, Egarr leads us through the sunny Fancie: for my ladye nevell treating the normally triumphal concluding phrase with something like poignancy or nostalgia. Perhaps the rising scale with which the fantasia begins was taken by Byrd from similar passages in his motet Descendit de coelis (second book of Cantiones sacrae 1591, the year copying of My Ladye Nevells Booke was completed) at the word “lux” in bars 66-73.
And so to the final item, The Bells, Byrd’s incredible edifice built upon a ground of two notes. This is a very personal reading by Egarr – he says in the booklet that it is the piece that turned him on to Byrd – yet ironically it is the one where he veers most away from what Byrd has written. Perhaps Egarr is emulating the sound of some actual modern bellringers whom he has heard, imitating their technique by adding extra notes to Byrd’s surviving texts, and not always doing so flatteringly, as in one passage where the parts seem – deliberately, one assumes – to get out of time with one another. It is a passionate and committed performance, one where the performer deserves to be indulged.
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Music of the Elizabethan Avant Garde from Add. MS 31390
LeStrange Viols
66:22
Olde Focus FCR912
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n 2015 the excellent LeStrange Viols, from New York, placed us all in their debt with a fine debut disc of rewarding music composed by the neglected but estimable William Cranford (FCR905). Now they compound our debt by offering this selection from a manuscript in the British Library which is one of the most important of Elizabethan musical sources.
Why open the disc with the premiere on disc of In aeternum? It is a neglected work by the similarly neglected William Mundy, which survives only in this source, one of several with a Latin title but no text (like his O mater mundi recorded by Hesperion XX) so it could be an instrumental fantasia or a choral motet. So why the sudden prominence? Probably because LeStrange Viols want listeners to discover that this is a work of surpassing beauty, and they play it accordingly. This is followed by the famous, or perhaps infamous, In nomine by the otherwise unknown Picforth. It is his only known work, but even his Christian name has not survived. Each of the five parts plays a single unchanging rhythmic value different from all other parts, yet this literally timeless work hangs together convincingly and mesmerizingly, sounding in many places like a cross between the famous Lento of Howard Skempton and the studies for player piano by Conlon Nancarrow. In other recordings the “alto” part, which is in triple time and gives rise to more syncopations that the rest, is not always audible under the more active “treble”, but here the LeStranges play every part except the cantus firmus itself pizzicato. This could emerge as a mere gimmick, but it successfully points up what Picforth is up to here, and although it sacrifices some of the sonorousness of his part- writing, it achieves a scintillating clarity. Other interpretations are available.
Altogether there are 26 pieces on this recording, but before moving on to summarize the rest of the contents, I will mention the third work, partly to emphasize that the disc gets off to such a stunning start. This is John Taverner’s Quemadmodum, another work with a Latin title but for which no text survives in any source. Like Mundy’s In aeternum it has been editorially fitted out in more than one edition with a convincing Latin text for vocal performance. If it is indeed by Taverner, it must be a late work judging by its stylistic debt to the Franco-Flemish school, and whether instrumental or vocal, it is one of the composer’s finest, and one of the best works of the Tudor period. Previous recordings by viols have all failed to do justice to Taverner’s wonderfully expressive part-writing in relation to the sonorities that he creates, but LeStrange’s interpretation is on a level with the best of those choral versions recorded by Contrapunctus, Magnificat and the Taverner Choir. The descending phrase that begins its second part “Sitivit anima mea” seems to have been borrowed by Byrd to begin the second part “Eheu mihi” of his eight-part psalm setting Ad Dominum cum tribularer.
I want to digress here briefly to discuss the attribution of Quemadmodum to Taverner, in the light of the work’s proximity on this disc to Mundy’s In aeternum and their being in the same manuscript. There are many similarities between the two pieces, the most striking being the recurrence in both pieces, especially in In aeternum, of the short phrase a b c a (at whichever pitch, the second note sometimes flattened, the third sometimes sharp, though obviously not in the same phrase) which often proceeds again to b, hence a b c a b. Doubts have been expressed over the attribution of Quemadmodum to Taverner, not least by Hugh Benham in his book about the composer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003, p. 249) who notes that one source (WB MCG) attributes it to Tye. It is in fact anonymous in 31390 itself. This leaves two other sources, in both of which it is attributed to Taverner (Benham, p. 57). Mundy’s In aeternum survives only in 31390. Other pieces by Mundy and works by Tye also appear in 31390, as well as the original In nomine, here correctly attributed to Taverner and with a fifth part added. Quemadmodum which as we have seen is anonymous in 31390, is Taverner’s most uncharacteristic work, if it is indeed by him. Tye is an even less likely composer, and nobody yet has proposed Mundy, but Quemadmodum seems a little too old-fashioned to be by the same composer as In aeternum. Perhaps Mundy, younger by three decades, was impressed by Quemadmodum – a cutting edge composition by English standards if by Taverner – and was inspired to incorporate some of its features, particularly melodies and sonorities, into his own work, while still imposing his own more modern stamp upon the latter.
The rest of the disc consists of either mainstream consort works, such as In nomines (highlights are the two pieces in seven parts by Parsons, the first of which has an alternative but discredited attribution to Byrd), and textless pieces that are known, or presumed, to have been composed for voices. One of the many charms of this disc is that several of the composers, like Picforth, are quite obscure, yet their music is most enjoyable. Edward Blankes, Clement Woodcock, Nicholas Strogers, Osbert Parsley, Mallorie and Brewster all receive their well-deserved day in the sun with some delightful consort music, and there are also appearances by prominent European composers such as Clemens, Croce, Wilder (albeit he was based in England) and Janequin, besides the less familiar Flemish composer Jacquet de Berchem – not to be confused with the now better-known older French contemporary Jacquet of Mantua. The majority of the Europeans’ works represented here are instrumental versions of songs.
It remains to mention three motets by major English composers which survive with their Latin texts but which appear in 31390 in an ostensibly instrumental garb. Sheppard’s Dum transisset a6 is a Respond of surpassing beauty. The repeats are not included, neither is the intervening plainsong, but this still makes for a satisfying musical entity. Byrd is represented by two pieces. His first In nomine in five parts (an attribution to Mundy in one source is scored out) might originally have been composed for only four, with a fifth added possibly by the composer himself. The performance here is strikingly rustic compared with the urbanity of Fretwork’s version on their complete recording of Byrd’s consort music; interestingly Phantasm eschew the work altogether both on their own complete recording, and on their earlier disc which Byrd shares with Richard Mico, perhaps favouring the deleted attribution to Mundy. O salutaris hostia is by a country mile Byrd’s – and indeed most other Tudor composers’ – most discordant piece, as the young musician – perhaps playfully, perhaps satirically, certainly determinedly – bulldozes a three-part canon through the work. More peacefully, Tallis’s O sacrum convivium is the most familiar of such pieces on the recording, but still disconcerting in this version not just for the ironed-out word-setting, but for some strikingly different accidentals, both present and absent in 31390, compared with the more familiar vocal version from his Cantiones sacrae published jointly with Byrd in 1575.
LeStrange Viols’ performances are all that one could desire. This really is a delightful disc from beginning to end – the exuberant Me li Bavari by Croce. Tempi are judicious, and balance such that all the parts can be heard clearly in both the prevailing polyphony and in the more occasional homophony. Nearly all the viols played are from the Caldwell Collection of Viols (in Oberlin, OH), instruments of the 16-18th centuries from England, Germany, France and Brabant. This recording is easy to obtain on the internet, and well worth purchasing.
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[dropcap]A[/dropcap]ny first recording of music by such a major figure as Claudio Monteverdi should be celebrated; the fact that his Scherzi Musicali (published by his brother, who also contributes two pieces, in 1607) have not previously made it on to disk is that 17 strophic arias sung in three parts but up to six sopranos and a single voice, separated by ritornelli in which the violinists and recorder player compete to add as many ornaments as they can, accompanied by keyboards, pluckers and a symphonia with drone, might be a challenging experience – and so it turned out. Enthusiastic as the singers are, and sweet as their voices might be, they should not have been persuaded to consent to allowing themselves to be recorded; I gain nothing by being hyper-critical, so will leave the review there. To be fair, though, I don’t think I ever want to hear another recording of the set – perhaps one or two pieces in the context of a more varied concert.
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Elena De Simone mezzo-soprano, Ensemble Il Mosaico
61:17
Tactus TC 690801
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here are ten arias from eight different operas on this CD running between four minutes to well over eight, and they amply display Hasse’s gifts both in melodic terms but also in knowing the voice for which he was writing. While the objective of the project is noble enough (to bring Hasse’s music back to wider notice), the realisation may not have the desired effect. The problem is not with the performers, but rather with their number; with the best will in the world, a string quartet with violone and harpsichord cannot recreate the sound world of an orchestra, and a whole disc of just one singer and a string ensemble would struggle to sustain anyone’s imagination beyond a few arias – perhaps a few recitatives, or a couple of sinfonias from the operas with woodwinds and brass might have helped. I mean this not as criticism but as encouragement to continue exploring Hasse’s music but with a broader palette!
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Andrea Lauren-Brown soprano, Markus Schäfer tenor, Virgil Mischok bass, I Virtuosi Italiani, Franz Hauk
61:35
Naxos 8.573811
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen Clifford and I started Early Music Review, we always said we would review HIP CDs and others that featured world premiere recordings; all eight tracks – of repertoire dating from 1791 to c. 1802 – on this CD are just that, and (in some respects, despite myself) I enjoyed the experience of hearing them. Mayr is better known these days as an opera composer and these four Marian antiphon settings (no fewer than three Salve Reginas!), three multi-movement motets and a 12-minute dramatic Italian piece confirm his gift for both capturing the mood of words and writing for the voice. The six of the eight works are for soprano (one Salve Regina is a duet with bass), while the Salve Regina in B flat and the Italian piece (Qual colpa eterno Dio) are for tenor. The booklet notes contain a wealth of information about the sources and lament the lack of a comprehensive study of this aspect of Mayr’s output; on the basis of this recording, that would seem a fair assessment. Indeed, perhaps some HIPsters would like to explore the four oratorios he wrote for the Mendicanti in Venice?
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[dropcap]D[/dropcap]uring the baroque period, it was customary for composers to set the same psalm texts many times as demanded by the liturgical requirements of Vespers services. This typically enterprising recording from Weser-Renaissance under Manfred Cordes brings us seven of the surviving settings of “In you, O Lord, I put my trust”, an especially poignant text for Rosenmüller, whose seemingly meteoric career in Leipzig was cut short in the early 1650s by scandal, and he was forced to live for nearly thirty years in exile. There are three solo versions (one each for soprano and tenor with a pair of violins and continuo, and one for alto with an additional pair of violas), two duets (soprano & alto, alto & tenor, each with violins and continuo), one for pairs of sopranos, tenors and violins, and finally a larger setting for five voices with five instruments. As always with this ensemble, the singing and playing are top notch, and the understanding of the architecture of the music, the pacing, the balance of individual voices and instruments is perfect. On the latter point, Cordes opts for violas da gamba for the middle parts with dulcian on the bottom and organ and chitarrone continuo. For all the praise I’ve lavished on the performances, however, the sources of the music (readily available online) reveal, for example, that the largest setting on the disc should have been much larger – two four-part choruses, one doubled by strings and crowned by a free violin line, the other reinforced by brass with a cornetto on top; perhaps the re-working was necessary on purely financial grounds, but surely it should be mentioned in the booklet notes. Would I rather have this rendition than none? Absolutely!
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Cantatas and Funeral Music
John Heuzenroeder tenor, Die Kölner Akademie choir & orchestra, Michael Alexander Willens
73:52
K148, 345, 468, 468a, 471, 477, 483, 484, 619 & 623
[dropcap]I[/dropcap] fear the temptation to emulate today’s headline writers and describe a CD of Mozart’s Masonic music as ‘chippings off the master’s block’ is too great to overcome, so I can only apologise. In fact, while all nine works that fall into category were composed with a functional purpose, not all of them are as insignificant as that might imply.
Masonry, at one time frowned upon in Austria, became hugely popular in the 1780s during the reign of the more tolerant Joseph II. Mozart became an initiate at the end of 1784, being followed by Haydn the following February. Anyone interested in Mozart’s Masonic activities is directed to H. C. Robbins Landon’s detailed survey in 1791: Mozart’s Last Year (1988); suffice it to say here that he evidently took his membership seriously, composing music for a variety of occasions. The most famous of these is the brief, but powerful, intense work known as the Mauerische Trauermusik, K 477 (Masonic Funeral Music), usually heard in an orchestral version with the plangent tones of three basset horns dominating the texture. Here, for the first time so far as I’m aware, it is heard in a conjectural original version (by the musicologist Philippe Autexier) with the Gregorian chant (from the Lamentations of Jeremiah) introduced in the central section given to a male chorus. Although not listed in this way in Mozart’s own thematic catalogue – nor is the version with three basset horns – his listing contains enough anomalies to at least make the proposition feasible. More importantly for the listener to the present CD, it is highly effective, the desolate text adding to the work’s sombre potency.
Two other pieces stand out. One is the celebratory cantata, Laut verkünde unsre Freude, K 623, written for the inauguration of a new temple and Mozart’s last completed work, music that not surprisingly has a strong relationship with Die Zauberflöte, completed two months earlier. Like the earlier cantata, Dir Seele des Weltalls, K429, which includes a charming aria welcoming the arrival of spring, K 623 is scored for tenor, chorus and orchestra, although the latter also includes a duet with a bass soloist (the excellent Mario Borgioni). The remaining pieces are slighter strophic songs for tenor with alternating choral verses or refrains, accompanied by piano or organ. Perhaps the most interesting is Lied zur Gesellenreise, K 468, which concerns the journey toward knowledge and may have been composed for the elevation of Mozart’s father Leopold to a new level in the Masonic hierarchy in March 1785.
In addition to the Masonic music, the CD also includes the interludes to Gebler’s play Thamos, König in Ägyptien, the incidental music from which (including choruses) Mozart worked on over a period of time. While not directly connected with Masonry, the plot concerning overcoming the challenges of life is certainly Masonic in spirit. The interludes were among the last pieces Mozart composed (in the late 1770s) for the play, alternating music of lyrical sensitivity with passages of highly dramatic, powerful orchestration that point towards Idomeneo.
The performances of all this music are outstanding, the Australian tenor John Heuzenroeder being the possessor of an exceptionally agreeable lyric tenor capable not only of an easy fluidity in cantabile passages, but also of making dramatic points in declamatory recitative. Michael Alexander Willens draws excellent, idiomatic playing from the period instrument Die Kölner Akademie, of which he is music director. All in all, this is an excellent CD that explores some of the lesser known contents of the Mozartian treasure chest.
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The lute music of il Divino Francesco Canova da Milano (1497-1543), Vol. 2
72:02
BGS128 (7 60537 09045 4)
[dropcap]F[/dropcap]rancesco Canova da Milano’s ricercars and fantasias are freely composed polyphonic pieces, and consist largely of short sequences of musical ideas, each developed and explored. The present CD comprises 29 of them, which Nigel North arranges into sets according to key. The first set (Ness 6, 61, 67 65, 23) are all in F major. A distinctive feature of Francesco’s style is his constantly shifting harmonic vocabulary, heard to good effect in Ricercar 6. B naturals replace B flats to take us sharp side of the spectrum, and E flats replace E naturals to take us flat side. However, these shifts are too temporary to count as modulation to a different key, but rather they are chromatic touches to an enriched palette of chords in F major. An interesting example is Fantasia 61, which effectively ends with a perfect cadence (C – F) in bar 34, rounded off with a plagal cadence (B flat – F) in bar 36. However, to reach the B flat chord Francesco inserts a quick chord of E flat – a secondary subdominant – which exaggerates the move flat side for the plagal cadence. Many of Francesco’s pieces are similar in character, indeed some passages occur in more than one piece: the passage in bars 22-4 of Fantasia 61 is the same as bars 52-4 of Fantasia 67. For variety North adopts different speeds: Ricercar 6 is slow and rhapsodic. His rhythmic freedom is effective in clarifying phrasing and drawing attention to special chords, although sometimes it creates an unsettling jerkiness especially in descending scalic passages. Excitement is lost in bar 25, where four quavers are slowed down almost to the speed of crotchets elsewhere in the piece. In contrast, Fantasia 61 has no quavers, and North takes it at a fast and sprightly tempo. He corrects a dittographical error in Fantasia 65 by omitting bars 110-2: Arthur Ness in his collected Milano edition and Martin Shepherd in the Lute Society Milano series, both reproduce these bars, which I accept were wrongly duplicated in the original.
The G minor set (Ness 70, 71, 88, 55) begins with two beautiful miniature ricercars (70, 71) taken from Vincenzo Galilei’s Intavolatura de Lauto (Rome, 1563), published 20 years after Francesco’s death. Ricercar 70 begins with five rolled chords, and grows into imitative polyphony, with the theme heard at three different octaves. North strings his lute as Francesco did, that is with the 4th, 5th and 6th courses strung in octaves. When one of these courses is plucked, both notes will normally be heard, but it is possible to emphasise the lower octave by plucking with one’s right-hand thumb, or the upper octave by plucking with one’s index finger. In bar 31 of Ricercar 71, a low f# on the 4th course is marked with a dot for the note to be played with the index finger, but North appears to use his thumb, bringing out the lower octave instead. Fortunately this tiny detail does not detract from North’s thoughtful and expressive performance. In Ricercar 88 he changes c6 to a5, I think correctly, which coincidentally matches a similar passage in bars 55-7 of Ricercar 6; there are some beautifully placed chords in bar 27, but his rallentando at bar 51 loses the excitement of four fast cadential quavers.
The third set (Ness 78, 29, 91, 5) is in F major, and is played on a viola da mano tuned a tone higher than the lute. Both instruments were built by Malcolm Prior, and have a bright, clear tone, ideal for this repertoire. The earliest printed source of Francesco’s music is Intavolatura de Viola o vero Lauto (1536), which mentions both instruments; it is likely that the music in Italian lute tablature was intended for the lute, and that the music in Neapolitan tablature was intended for the viola da mano, but both instruments have the same tuning, and they could be used interchangeably for any of Francesco’s music. North also uses the viola da mano for the last two sets (Ness 52, 21, 63, 20, 18, 19).
Some of Francesco’s pieces are quite short, lasting one minute or less. Ricercar 91 has a mere 29 bars, but North spins it out to 1’36” by playing it through twice. For track 14 he plays Ricercar 14, runs straight into Ricercar 74, and then goes back for a repeat of Ricercar 14, the whole thing lasting just 2’16”. Fantasia 25, on the other hand, is an extended work, made up of many sections, each developing a particular musical idea; most surprising and effective are three semibreve chords at bars 111-3, which temporarily call a halt to the constant hustle and bustle of quavers and semiquavers scurrying across the fingerboard. Fantasia 83 appears twice in Cambridge University Library Dd.2.11: on folio 16r (used by Ness in his edition), and folio 18r (used by Shepherd for the Lute Society Milano series). North plays the version on 18r, but he does not include c4 in the first bar, a note which Shepherd reinstates for the sake of imitation of the opening theme. The CD ends with a long Fantasia from the Castelfranco MS, which does not have a Ness number, because it was discovered after Ness’s edition was published.
This is North’s second CD devoted to the music of Francesco. The first was Dolcissima et Amorosa (BGS 122). I hope he will be tempted to produce a third.
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