William Lawes: Lighten mine eies: Selected Psalms & Harp Consorts. Ensemble près de votre oreille; Robin Pharo, violas da gamba & conducting. harmonia mundi CD: HMM905391- 3149020955031. Total time: 62:19.
Radiant Dawn. The Gesualdo Six; Owain Park, director; Matilda Lloyd, trumpet. Hyperion CDA68465. Total time: 71:00.
DIGITAL REVIEW — Two recent recordings explore old repertoire in new ways. William Lawes: Lighten mine eies: Selected Psalms & Harp Consorts celebrates the work of British composer Lawes (1602-1645); the album’s primary contribution is the inclusion of the Psalm settings from a composer known more for his instrumental music. Meanwhile, the U.K.’s The Gesualdo Six has paired up with trumpeter Matilda Lloyd for a wide-ranging march through the combined sound of trumpet and voice, from the Middle Ages to some newly commissioned pieces.
The name of Robin Pharo’s ensemble, “Près de votre oreille,” means “Close to your ear.” On their harmonia mundi debut, the group brings the listener’s ear right up next to some truly sublime sounds. Lawes, composer to the court of Charles I, created a large amount of secular and sacred works, as his position demanded. Among those are three-voice settings of some of the Psalms, performed here by soprano Maïlys De Villoutreys, mezzo-soprano Anaïs Bertrand, and bass Alex Rosen. They are interspersed with a Harp Consort to pleasing effect.
Harpist Pernelle Marzorati has a delicate touch in the instrumental pieces, which are truly team efforts rather than harp solos with accompaniment. The floating, rhythmically free sound of Fiona-Émilie Poupard’s violin gives the consorts an ethereal quality, grounded by the expressive viola da gamba of Pharo.
The singing is well-crafted to match the instrumental style: All three voices meld seamlessly into each other and with the continuo backdrop. “How long will thou forget me, Lord, forever” is a particularly good example of Lawes’ cutting-edge use of contrasting pitch range and chromatic dissonance to carry the meaning of the texts through sound.
Lawes’ compositional style is intricate, treating all voices and instruments as equals. He is the successor to William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons and shares those composers’ sophisticated understanding of counterpoint. The impassioned use of chromaticism and rhythmic flexibility in the vocal writing is a reminder that the days of the multi-voiced madrigal are not yet in the past (Lawes’ short life — he was killed during a seige at age 43 — corresponded with Monteverdi’s last decades). Meanwhile, the writing for instruments reflects the move toward the “fantastical style” developing on the Continent.
Pharo and company have done a fine job of arranging this music beyond simply oscillating between vocal and instrumental pieces. In several instances, a psalm is directly preceded by an instrumental “Pavin” (i.e., pavane) that flows into it perfectly. The ensemble’s harpsichordist and organist, Loris Barrucand, is credited with much of this work, including a solo harpsichord version of the psalm “My God, my rock, regard my cry,” played immediately after the sung version; Barrucand also composed accompaniment for all the instruments on another psalm, very much in Lawes’ own style.
This is an outstanding label debut. Ensemble près de votre oreille’s next ventures should be greatly anticipated by early-music fans.
The British vocal ensemble The Gesualdo Six also has something new to say on their latest Hyperion release, Radiant Dawn. Owain Park, the group’s director, describes the album as an exploration of “different shades of light through music, capturing moments across the spectrum.”
Despite the thematic presence of chant as material and influence on many tracks, this is not primarily a collection of old music. Rather, it’s mostly newer pieces by composers who acknowledge their debt to sacred music of the past, with some older examplars serving as reminders of the tradition. The result is a moving and mystical listening experience.
Twelfth-century abbess and polymath Hildegard of Bingen provides the oldest composition. Her O gloriosissimi lux is sung in earnest a cappella solo by Gesualdo Six’s tenor, Joseph Webb. The other two early works are by Thomas Tallis, the 16th-century master of vocal polyphony. His O nata lux de lumine is performed with the Six’s usual smoothness and precision as it snakes through counterpoint seasoned with pinches of dissonance.
When Eleanor Daley’s grandmother moon begins right after that Tallis, it almost convinces the listener that the two pieces were written specifically to go together. Yet Daley’s meditative piece sets a text by Mi’kmaq poet Mary Louise Martin, serving as a reminder that Western Europe has never had a monopoly on spiritual creativity.
English composer Alec Roth’s Night Prayer opens the album, a fascinating amalgam of his usual neo-mythical sound and a medieval Compline hymn, passed in fragments from voice to voice. Sustained notes from Matilda Lloyd’s trumpet — she is the recording’s only instrumentalist — tether the celestial vocal orbits to a fixed point.
Park’s own composition, Sommernacht, creates a chordal yet atonal sound world whose dissonances and rhythmic surprises have an unsettling, almost spooky effect. That work is immediately counteracted by the calming “Abendlied” from the 3 geistiche Gesänge by 19th-century Lichtenstein-born composer and organist Josef Rheinberger. Acknowledging the historical importance of the Romantic era to the development of sacred music provides a through-line that is often forgotten or dismissed in the early-music world.
Now and then Lloyd’s trumpet adds a shifting palette of tone colors throughout the album. It is especially striking in James Macmillan’s “In splendoribus sanctorum,” from his Strathclyde Motets, weaving in Britten-like bursts of melody. Lloyd also provides gentle counter-themes in Deborah Pritchard’s The light thereof.
Part of the thrill of this album is the acoustics at All Hallows church in Gospel Oak, London, where it was recorded. That vibrant sound has been captured gloriously by producer Adrian Peacock and a team of skilled engineers.
