Nicholas Lanier fits like a glove into the haute couture of Charles I’s court. As the first ‘Master of the King’s Musicke’, Lanier had his finger on the pulse of sophisticated domestic and continental musical practices, understood the subtle relationship between literature and music, sang and played ravishingly and was truly cultivated in all the arts, as painter, engraver, curator, dealer and friend of painters like Rubens and Van Dyck. As the redoubtable Roger North reports, ‘King Charles had a very ingenious vertuoso, one Nicholas Laniere, whom he employed into Itally to buy capitall pictures … And after his returne, he composed a recitativo, which was a poem being the tragedy of Hero and Leander. The King was exceedingly pleased with this pathetick song and caused Lanier often to sing it, while he stood next with his hand upon his shoulder.’
This is the declamatory song upon which Lanier’s musical reputation has tended to rest, although he also wrote effective, if not always memorable, lute songs in the Elizabethan vein and quasi-declamatory songs (again, inconsistent in quality), several of which appear here in this enterprising and beautifully realized recording; of these, the two Italian settings are especially sensual and Do not expect to hear is a song in the noblest native tradition. Perhaps the most subtle of all is No more shall meads, to words by Thomas Carew, in which Lanier manipulates an extended ground-bass with extraordinary resource. The composer himself could not have imagined such kaleidoscopic and sympathetic performances as Paul Agnew and Christopher Wilson deliver here. As for what North terms ‘a nonpareil’, Hero and Leander is a remarkable achievement for its time (c1628) and place. This is a truly theatrical scena of the sort which Monteverdi would have recognized and admired, not least for the brilliance of the dramatic pacing. Agnew is keenly aware of this, matching Lanier inch-for-inch for a sustained emotional response to the text. The lonely realism of the final section, ‘See, see the bashful morn’ is movingly resolved by both composer and performer. Agnew has great lyrical gifts in this repertory and, accompanied by the colourful Italian-style theorbo of Wilson, his performance here amounts to an important and often revelatory release. Given in memory of Bob Spencer, this recording is a fitting dedication.'