LAWES The Royal Consort
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: William Lawes
Genre:
Chamber
Label: Linn
Magazine Review Date: 06/2015
Media Format: Super Audio CD
Media Runtime: 144
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CKD470
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Royall Consorts |
William Lawes, Composer
Daniel Hyde, Organ Elizabeth Kenny, Theorbo Emily Ashton, Tenor viol Phantasm William Lawes, Composer |
3 Consorts to the Organ |
William Lawes, Composer
Daniel Hyde, Organ Elizabeth Kenny, Theorbo Emily Ashton, Tenor viol Phantasm William Lawes, Composer |
Author: David Vickers
Phantasm’s playing brims with imaginative fantasy and dance-like momentum, although from time to time Lawes’s unpredictable liberties with irregular phrase lengths would not have suited actual dancers (eg an Aire and Corant at the core of Set No 7). Every shift in imitative contrapuntal detail, rhythmical emphasis and melodic direction serves a conversational discourse between the pair of treble viols (Dreyfus and Emilia Benjamin) and the tenor and bass viols (Jonathan Manson, Mikko Perkola and Markku Luolajan-Mikkola); Elizabeth Kenny’s theorbo continuo realisations are a model of tasteful clarity. Concise individual pieces often display rare sophistication, such as the seemingly floating Paven that begins No 9 and a song-like Galliard in No 2. A vividly accentuated ‘Morriss’ folk dance follows hot on the heels of an elegant Corant (No 6) without any hint of formulaic articulation. Strong doses of Jacobean melancholy are abundant in a few longer pieces such as the Paven in D minor that starts No 2; this is one of several pavans that quotes from Dowland’s Lacrimae but the inclusion of an extra short set for four-part viols dating from earlier in Lawes’s career suggests that Dowland’s influence cast a subtler shadow later on. A pleasing broadening of textures is injected into this beguiling survey by the additional tenor violist Emily Ashton and organist Daniel Hyde in some denser six-part sets that could not be squeezed on to Phantasm’s 2012 recording of Lawes’s Consorts to the Organ (2/13).
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