In his notes for this release, John Potter poses the question, “what is a
song?” This might seem like an easy question to answer, and in essence it
is. The nuance we are looking for here is that gap between what might be
defined now as an ‘art song’ and a ‘pop song’. These days we’ve become used
to hearing songs and music as recordings, and this is where our times
contrast with those in which the music of the street and evenings around the
piano would have been the way to hear the tunes of the moment – unique and
individual in performance, but still instantly recognisable. Even now there
is nothing to stop anyone singing Elvis Costello’s ‘Shipbuilding’ at home,
but why would you even try when there is such a sublime recording available
at the flick of a switch.
We can get ourselves tied up in knots with these kinds of issues, but what
we have here is a mixture of songs arranged and performed ‘in stile antico’
in a way that, were you unaware that John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin fame,
Sting and Genesis-keyboardist Tony Banks were involved, you would on casual
listening hardly suspect that these were anything other than the product of
some 16
th century balladeer. John Potter states that “asking a
rock music composer to set existing poetry within a genre we knew well meant
that we singers wouldn’t need to pretend to be pop singers – we were still
‘interpreting’ a text in a way that we’re familiar with” – covering this
production against the discomforting results of the likes of “opera singers
attempting to sing rock songs… to their embarrassment.”
As a whole these songs all work very well, performed with John Potter and
Anna Maria Friman’s expressive but disarmingly unaffected voices, and
accompanied by the rich sonorities of antiphonally placed lutes bathed in
the usual ECM/Rainbow Studio resonance. There is certainly nothing to be
afraid of here, and once the ground has been reconnoitred there are no real
mysteries but there is much to enjoy. The title
Amores Pasados
covers the first three songs, a set written by John Paul Jones for Red Byrd
in 1989. All of these songs have that special alchemy of sounding new and
ancient at the same time.
Al son de los arroyuelos is a superb duet
with Potter and Anna Maria Friman, to which
No dormía is a slow and
atmospherically timeless counterpoint.
Se ell encina is a lyrical
ballad that rounds off the cycle with élan.
Peter Warlock’s
Sleep is given a magical aura in this
performance, those unexpected twists of harmony all the more piquant through
the two lutes. Thomas Campion’s songs slip into the programme with subtle
ease, the chromatic touches in
Follow thy fair sun allying this
senior figure with his modern companions more closely than you might expect.
The instrumental
In Nomine pieces add some nice variety.
I have to admit to not finding much of interest in the solo forays of the
non-vocalist members of the group Genesis, but the “harmonic quirkiness and
structural complexity” of Tony Banks’s music certainly take his setting of
Follow thy fair sun further away from ‘lute song’ convention as
anything here. As if to illustrate the connections between ‘art’ and ‘pop’
songs but no doubt by chance, the first notes of E.J. Moeran’s
Oh fair
enough are sky and plain are the same as ‘And I Love Her’ from The
Beatles album
A Hard Day’s Night. Moeran is framed by Banks, whose
second contribution,
The cypress curtain of the night has some nice
turns of phrase.
Sting has already made forays into
lute songs, and his
Bury me deep in the greenwood,
originally intended for a filmed version of the story of Robin Hood, has a
rustic charm which closes this attractive programme with gentle elegance.
None of the sung texts are given in the booklet for this release, and while
there is little problem following the diction of the performers it would
have been nice to have a translation of the Spanish texts in
Amores
Pasados. Duration might also be an issue for some, but if you want to
give an album ‘pop’ credibility then it certainly shouldn’t be
too
long.
Dominy Clements
