MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

Buy through MusicWeb
for £12 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

William CORKINE (fl. 1610-1617)
Each Lovely Grace - The Second Booke of Ayres (1612)
Cantar alla Viola (Nadine Balbeisi (soprano); Fernando Marín (viola da gamba, lyra-viol))
rec. 6-9 June 2011, Church of Santa Maria di Siurana, Spain. DDD
NIMBUS NI6173 [1:06:45]

Experience Classicsonline


Prelude (1) (Lyra-viol) [1:39]
Shall a smile [2:14]
Fly swift my thoughts [1:23]
Pavin (Lyra-viol) (2nd tuning) [5:14]
Downe, downe proud minde [3:44]
Away, away [1:46]
Mounsiers Almaine (Lyra-viol) [3:30]
Prelude (2) (Lyra-viol) [0:33]
Goe heavy thoughts [4:37]
Almaine (Lyra-viol) (2nd tuning) [4:59]
Coranto (2) [1:26]
Two Lovers sat lamenting [3:58]
T’is true, t’is day [4:10]
If my Complaints (Lyra-viol) [3:08]
Coranto (1) [1:29]
Man like a Prophet of ensuing yeeres [2:41]
Shall I be with joyes deceived? [1:11]
Each lovely grace [2:50]
The Punckes delight (Lyra-viol) [1:44]
Beware faire Maides [5:39]
Come live with me and be my Love (Lyra-viol) [3:54]
My deerest Mistrisse [0:54]
Walsingham (Lyra-viol) [2:45]
As by a fountaine chast Diana sate [1:15]

 
We know all too little about William Corkine: that he was an English composer and musician - player of the lute, viol and lyra-viol - who flourished in the second decade of the seventeenth century in Britain before travelling to Poland in 1617. Two books of 'Ayres' exist … the first expects lute and bass-viol accompaniment and was published in 1610; the second (1612) contains 18 songs for bass-viol alone, 13 of them lack tablature or alternative part-song versions.
 
It's this latter collection that is presented here; other songs included on the CD are those of Corkine's 'Lessons' with lyra viol. This is the only CD devoted entirely to Corkine's intense, melodious, concentrated and highly expressive music other than one on Channel Classics (21204) by Mieneke Van der Velden, Johannette Zomer, Fred Jacobs and Jaap ter Linden ('Musickes Sweetest Joyes').
 
This music is truly lovely, focused and - perhaps most noticeably - reflects many moods. From the melancholy so characteristic of the early Jacobean (such as Goe heavy thoughts and Downe, downe proud minde) through the pithy and pointed (Fly swift my thoughts) to the optimistic (My deerest Mistrisse). Only a couple are longer than five minutes; My deerest Mistrisse less than one. But this is emphatically not a collection of historical curios. Nadine Balbeisi and Fernando Marín obviously have a great deal invested in the music, its emotional impact, the purposeful tension between text and music, at which we can safely say Corkine was expert. They present the rounded and mature resultant blend to us with neither fuss nor apology.
 
It's very much its own music … sui generis. No overt weeping or 'professional' depression, as was a speciality of the likes of Dowland. Somehow the music we hear in this collection is much more low key, more reserved, and generally the tempi are slower. There is a less extrovert feel to the music; it's more concentrated; less self-conscious, in the way that Byrd's or Gibbons' equivalents are, rather than Farnaby's or Weelkes'. Balbeisi and Marín understand the idiom very well. At times, one wishes for a little more spring in their step, a little more vivacity to a song like Two Lovers sat lamenting, for instance.
 
The pair have the import of the music well, though. Two aspects of the work of the duo, Cantar alla Viola, stand out: the intimate relationship between voice and viol, which not only does justice to the textures in which Corkine works, but even enhances his gentle intensity. And they bring the fresh attitude of an American/Jordanian (Balbeisi) and a Spaniard (Marín) to the very English music of Corkine.
 
The attention paid to the construction and tuning of the instrument - a modern copy, described well in the accompanying booklet - is clearly as responsible for the happy embrace of voice with strings as are the technical expertise and interpretative skills of the duo. Equally interesting, and equally successful, is the approach which Balbeisi and Marín take to pronunciation. It's apparently a pronunciation consistent with scholars' best efforts at approximation to Early Modern English with its greater degree of what to us is 'earthiness'. And of greater variety … pronunciation of the same word may legitimately vary from song to song.
 
This CD has little of the sense of a standalone recital, nor an arbitrary collection, still less a thematic mixture. Rather, it's a faithful and hence highly enjoyable, offering laying as bare the music as Corkine – who, on this evidence, deserves to be better known - lays bare his mind and heart in music of true originality and depth.
 
The acoustic is perhaps not so well-balanced, voice and viol, as one might like. Balbeisi's gentle, layered, soprano is somewhat distant, when the music calls for maximum exposure to its every nuance. The copy of the CD received for review exhibited noticeable distortion in several places - the start of track 20, for example. In the long run, neither of these will distract too much from our enjoyment of music that is otherwise both highly individual and unlikely to be recorded or performed on its own elsewhere.
 
Mark Sealey
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.