William BYRD (1539-1623)
Sellenger’s Rownde [5.31]
Tobias HUME (c.1569-1645)
Captain Hume’s Lamentation [6:38]
William LAWES (1605-1645)
Suite No 8 in D major [11:37]
John JENKINS (1592-1678)
Suite No 2 in G minor [11.10]
Christopher SIMPSON (c.1605-1669)
The Little Consort Suite in G minor [12.50]
Thomas BALTZAR (c.1631-1663)
John Come Kiss me now [5.01]
Matthew LOCKE (c.1621-1677)
For Several Friends Suite in B flat Major [7.49]
Henry PURCELL (1659-1695)
Ayres for the Theatre: Overture from Bonduca [4.21]
Slow Air from Distressed Innocence [2.04]
Air fromThe Virtuous Wife [0.36]
Hornpipe on a Ground fromThe Married Beau [1.59]
Dance for the Chinese Man and Woman fromThe Fairy Queen [2.38]
Pavan in B flat Major [3.04]
Hornpipe from Abdelazar - Hole in the Wall [3.34]
Trio Settecento (Rachel Barton Pine (violin): John Mark Rozendaal (viola da gamba): David Schrader (harpsichord and positiv organ))
rec. 1-6 August 2011, Nichols Concert Hall, Music Institute of Chicago, Evanston, Illinois
CEDILLE CDR 90000 135 [79.47]
This is the fourth and last in Trio Settecento’s European Tour
which has taken in sojourns in Italy, Germany and France. It’s now
the turn of Albion to host the American trio in an album that explores
English Fancy via the music of Byrd, Tobias Hume, William Lawes, John
Jenkins, Christopher Simpson, Thomas Baltzar, Locke, and Purcell.
Rachel Barton Pine plays on a replica of a Renaissance violin where the
neck and fingerboard are shorter than later models. It’s held on
the arm, not the shoulder, which was a novelty for her but one to which
she eventually got used. A = 440 is used in these recordings though the
group usually plays at A = 415. Byrd’s Sellinger’s Rownde
(or Sellenger’s Rownde) heard in an arrangement by the
trio and it sounds, as intended, as an attractive consort opener, though
cleverly it retains its keyboard origins via some extended passages for
David Schrader’s harpsichord. Tobias Hume’s Captain Hume’s
Lamentation was written for an instrument popular at the time, the
lyra viol, and continuo. Its transformation here is done with expressive
intensity, as befits the rather desolate feelings evoked. It is inevitable
that William Lawes should be explored in a disc of this kind. His well-known
Fantazia receives a fine performance, as do the two brief companion
works by him. John Jenkins was a less personalised composer than Lawes
but one still very much worth getting to know. His own Fantasia
is less complex than Lawes’ but it is more obviously refined. The
three Jenkins pieces are particularly well-chosen in the interests of
maximal contrast.
A less-remembered composer is Christopher Simpson whose The Little
Consort Suite in G minor offers seven very brief dance movements.
Composed for treble viol or violin, lyra viol and basso, this is in point
of fact something of a composite performance with pieces taken from both
books of Simpson’s consort music. But this enables us to hear the
fluid Pavan, a fleet Saraband and a delightful sequence
of deftly performed miniatures. Published in 1684, long after he had died,
Baltzar’s John Come Kiss me now has been adapted by Barton
Pine to play in the high positions of her instrument. The ingenious series
of variations on the song are resourcefully performed and prove highly
diverting. Matthew Locke’s brief dances from For Several Friends,
the Suite in B flat Major, fly by though things slow a little for the
Purcell sequence, of which the Hornpipe from Abdelazar –
‘Hole in the Wall’ is another arrangement by members
of the trio.
This delightfully played recital, very well recorded in Nichols Concert
Hall at the Music Institute of Chicago, will appeal strongly to those
who have followed the trio’s earlier European jaunts.
Jonathan Woolf
Previous review: Gary
Higginson
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