Brigitte Lesne is one of the most significant performers in the
field of medieval song. She has a thorough grounding in both the
theory, the scholarship and the practice of this repertoire, and
a quality of voice well suited to interpretation of something
like the full range of the vocal music of the middle ages. Her
achievements are well evidenced in her work, both in concert and
on record, with the groups Discantus and Alle Franceca and in
her teaching, particularly at the Centre de Musique Médievale
in Paris.
Thoroughly at
home in the repertoire Lesne’s performances of it are never
merely pedantic in their treatment of the tradition. Her ears
and her mind alike are open to many musical presences and
she isn’t afraid to let them play a role in keeping this music
alive. When, in issue 26 of the magazine Goldberg,
she chose “10 CDs for a Desert Island”, her choices included
performances of orthodox Chant, of music by Monteverdi, Bach,
Mozart, Schubert, Mahler and Stravinsky – as well as tracks
by Nina Simone and Cesaria Evora. She included only one piece
of medieval music (because it included the voices of her children),
observing that, otherwise, “Medieval Music is so much a part
of me that I wouldn’t need to bring a recording of it on this
adventure”. That sense of extreme familiarity and ease within
the idiom, of a personal expressiveness entirely natural and
grounded in years of hard work, is evident in all the performances
on this thoroughly enjoyable CD which mixes music datable
to the 12th to 14th centuries and traditional
music which surely goes back at least as far as that.
Alongside Lesne
in this recording are flautist Pierre Hamon (co-leader, with
Lesne, of Alla Francesca in its various incarnations) and
tambourine-virtuoso and singer Carlo Rizzo. Born at Mestre
in 1955, Rizzi is a remarkable musician, whose study of traditional
hand-percussion has been the foundation for his work in many
different musical contexts – folk music, music of the middle
ages, jazz and more. There are surely not many other musicians
who have worked with Bijan Chemirani, Brigitte Lesne and Bobbie
McFerrin!
Hamon, Lesne and
Rizzo bring their talents and experience, their sense of style
and their capabilities as improvisers, to the interpretation
of a range of musical materials illustrative of the networks
of conscious (and unconscious) borrowings, influences and
variations which knit together the music of the Mediterranean.
For it to fully live up to its title the disc should, I suppose,
have included music from North Africa, from Syria and Lebanon
too – but let’s not be greedy! What we get is a selection
which, geographically-speaking, includes work from Provence,
Florence, Naples, and Spain, and which includes both traditional
Sephardic pieces and Italian lauds, as well as estampies and
lullabies.
Rizzo’s percussion
work is everywhere excellent; Hamon is stylistically flexible
and produces some marvellous sounds from his battery of flutes;
Lesne is as exciting as ever vocally – and she is no slouch
on the harps, either! Particular highlights include ‘Camini
por altas torres’ a hauntingly melancholy Sephardic lament
of expulsion and isolation; the insistent rhythms of ‘Isabella’,
a fourteenth-century Italian istanpitta, in which the interplay
of flute and percussion is gorgeously intricate; ‘Or piangiamo,
che piange Maria’, a thirteenth century Italian laud with
a particularly beautiful melodic line, to which Lesne does
full justice. But every track here might be singled out for
praise, and unlike many such compilations, there is such variety
of genre and mood that this is a programme which can be listened
to straight through, as well as sampled.
Glyn Pursglove
Alla Francesca
En Trio: Brigitte Lesne (vocal, harps, percussion), Pierre Hamon
(flutes, bansuri, cornemuse, tambour), Carlo Rizzo (vocal, tammorra,
tamburello, tambourines) 
