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| Fretwork |
Thea Musgrave’s Wild Winter
performed last night by Fretwork and Alamire at Kings Place was a triumph despite
injury.
Thea was commissioned by Lichfield festival in 1993 to write
a piece to commemorate the 1643 Siege of Lichfield. The Royalist Earl of
Chesterfield had occupied Lichfield against the Puritans, but in March 1643
Parliamentary forces led by Lord Brooke attempted to take back the city. Although
the Puritans won this battle Lord Brooke was shot through the eye and killed,
which devout Royalists claimed was divine retribution. The Royalists took back
Lichfield, and it remained Royalist until the end of the Civil War, but not
without heavy damage to the cathedral and city and an outbreak of plague.
Wild Winter is written for 5 viols (treble, treble, tenor, bass, bass) and four voices (soprano, tenor, tenor and bass) and was first recorded by Fretwork in 1993 at Lichfield Cathedral. Last night’s performance was especially commendable because Simon Wall had lost his voice. During Alamire’s beautiful performance of Thomas Tallis’ (1505-1585) Lamentations of Jeremiah Simon was struggling to sing and David Skinner who directed the performance was doubling the part.
By the interval Simon had had to give up entirely and for Wild Winter Nicholas Todd took on the
second set of tenor solos, along with his own. Nevertheless the performance was
moving and passionate. Alamire covered the gap so well that, as someone
unfamiliar with this work, I would not have known that they were a man down.
Wild Winter is a
perfect example of the human qualities of viol and how viols are capable of so
much more than renaissance polyphony. From the very start Thea uses pizzicato
and percussive effects more usually at home in a modern string quartet, but
every bit as effective for viols. Every note was crystal clear, from the
striking first pizzicato to the final harmonics – a real feat when you have
frets and no sound post!
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| Thea Musgrave Photo: Christian Steiner |
The libretto is based on poems from different times and
countries, each sung in their original language: English, Spanish, French,
Russian, Italian and German. The poems all deal with the powerful emotions arising
from the loss and anguish caused by war, and together provide a timelessness
which brings the Siege of Lichfield forward 370 years into the present and to
current fighting all over the world. This suffering was brought to life by the
vocal talents of Alamire, who were equally at home in all the languages, and brought
out the struggles of soldiers and the people left at home.
Thankfully the combined consort did not leave us at
catharsis but brought us back to a more meditative consciousness with a
beautiful lament by Josquin Des Prez (1450-1521).
The beauty of Wild
Winter was supported by a renaissance program which began with Robert
Parson’s (1534-1571/2) In Nomine and Ave Maria. The In Nomine was a dissonant and striking start to the evening, and
contrasted with the more consonant Ave
Maria. But Rubum Quem by
Chistopher Tye (1505-1572) seemed to get a little lost in the hall. Viol is
difficult in a modern concert hall and it seems that even in an intimate
setting like Kings Place it is easy for the sound to become muddy. While I
could see the fingers moving I could not always hear detail especially when they
were playing fast. However from where I was sat the bases had their backs to me
so perhaps sound was muffled by their bodies. The Robert White (1505-1574) In Nomine had a very sweet treble solo
and lovely echoes and White’s Lamentations,
which led on to Wild Winter, was a
perfect foil providing a touch point for the moments of vocal polyphony in
Musgrave’s Lament IV where the role
of renaissance dissonance was provided by discordance in the viols.
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| Alamire, director David Skinner |
Fretwork and Alamire together brought out the tension in Wild Winter, piling up contrasts and
expectations - from the juxtaposition of the soprano with the male voices and
the different musical styles, to how the languages sound against each other. The performance was a perfect example of how
both in early and modern music the sound of voices and viols goes straight to
the very core of human emotional response.
Elsewhere on this blog:
review by Hilary Glover
- Arcangelo - Enchanted Forest at Wigmore Hall
- Review of Matthew Barley's Around Britten
- Review of Antonino Siragusa at Rosenblatt Recitals
- Juan: film review
- Royal Opera Live
- Review of Christopher Maltman, Lucy Crowe and Graham Johnson in recital
- Richard Rodney Bennett
- CD Review - Advent at Merton
- Home
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