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Awake Sweet Love John DOWLAND
(1563-1626) Can she excuse my wrongs? [3:01]
Flow, my tears, fall from your springs [3:37]
A Fancy solo lute [2:40]
Sorrow, stay, lend true
repentant tears [3:14]
The most sacred Queen Elizabeth, her Galliard solo
lute [1:19]
Go nightly cares, the enemy to rest [6:59]
Now, oh now I needs must part [5:16]
Preludium
solo lute [1:02] A Fantasie solo lute [4:48]
Say, Love, if ever thou didst find [2:05]
I die whenas I do not
see [1:50]
The Frog Galliard solo lute [1:55]
Awake, sweet love, thou art returned [2:39]
Tell me, true Love [4:34]
Thomas CAMPION
(c.1567-1620) Author of light, revive my dying sprite [2:52]
Oft have I sigh'd for
him that hears me not [2:33]
ANONYMOUS Come tread the paths of pensive pangs [3:41]
Thomas FORD (d.1648)
Since first I saw your face [2:33]
Edward JOHNSON
(fl 1572-1601) Eliza is the fairest Queen [1:57]
John DANYEL (1564-1626)
Eyes, look no more [4:18]
Thou pretty bird, how do I see[1:23]
Alfonso FERRABOSCO
(1543-1588) Pavin solo lute [3:05]
William HUNNIS
(attributed) (d.1597) In terrors trapp'd with
thraldom thrust[3:48]
James Bowman
(counter-tenor) David
Miller (lute) The viols of The King’s Consort
rec. February 1990
HELIOS CDH 55241
[72:22]
This Helios reissue
of a Hyperion favourite brings back to the fold some fine performances
by Bowman and Miller with the valued assistance of the viols
of The King’s Consort. This disc traces, in the main and with
an excursion for solos, the lute song from the first such published
in England,
Dowland’sFirste
Book of Songes or Ayres, to later
published examples of the genre. The programme is cleverly selected,
with the lute solos acting as punctuation points in the recital.
There is variety of mood and texture and tempo sufficient to
keep interest sustained throughout the entire length of the
disc. Similarly accompanying instruments are cannily varied
with Bowman shadowed either by lute, or viols or lute and viols.
The bulk of the
music, inevitably, is by Dowland and
that’s as it should be. Bowman is finely attuned to the melancholy,
to the gravity of the music and utilises his linguist’s ear
for nuance and for colour to maximum advantage. Though his voice
had, even then, begun to deepen and to widen, with an incipient
hoot becoming slowly apparent, it’s still an instrument capable
of considerable refinement and beauty of tone. He brings such
very real qualities to bear in a setting such as Flow, my
tears, fall from your springs where the texture of the voice
is wholly sympathetic, and the instinct for the crest and fall
of the line is superb. He does the same in Campion’sAuthor of light, revive my dying sprite.
The viol consort
prove deft accompanists in that long and involved setting
of Go nightly cares, the enemy to rest. Refinements of
colour and control of dynamics inform Now,
oh now I needs must part which is a particularly telling
example of Bowman’s artfulness in varying line lengths and a
kind of counter-tenorial Elizabethan
legato. Throughout there are great felicities of this kind,
ones that are never ill-considered or precious.
Occasionally there
is a recording fault; the viol consort can cover Bowman in the
balance. It happens most audibly in the anonymous setting of
Come tread the paths of pensive pangs but it does happen
elsewhere too. Full texts are printed.
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James Bowman
(counter-tenor) 
