Reviewed 24 February 2025
An engaging look at music for recorder inspired by the mystical and magical spanning 900 years from Hildegard of Bingen through to the winner of the BBC Radio 3/National Centre for Early Music for the 2021 Young Composers’ Award
Having given us a debut disc broadly inspired by the idea of tarantism, the latest disc from recorder quartet, Palisander (Tabea Debus, Lydia Gosnell, Miriam Monaghan & Caoimhe de Paor), Double, Double Toil & Trouble is equally imaginative. With repertoire spanning some 600 years, the disc is inspired by the mystical and magical.
There are modern versions of traditional pieces alongside music by Hildegard of Bingen, Diego Ortiz, Cipriano de Rore, Maddelena Casulana, Anthony Holborne Sweelinck, Bach, Tartini, and a suite from Purcell's The Fairy Queen, plus Kepler's Planets by Miriam Monaghan who plays with the group, and the winner of the BBC Radio 3/National Centre for Early Music for the 2021 Young Composers’ Award (18-25 Category), Kagura Suite by Delyth Field.
We begin with Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor originally for organ solo, its reinvention here for recorder quartet is very apt. This version takes us into a different sound world to Bach's original, yet it is still recognisably the same music.
With the second item on the disc we move into music that is evoking the theme. The Tryals and Condemnation of Three Notorious Witches is a Broadside Ballad from 1682 where a report of the trial and execution of witches was set to possibly the most well-used secular melody in England at this time, Fortune My Foe. The arrangement here is rather haunting, particularly as the group sing the piece. They follow it with Sweelinck's variations on the same tune, which he called Englesche Fortuyn. The sound world does feel English with a lovely dance feel to it.
By contrast, they follow this with music from the great religious mystic, Hildegard of Bingen. Their version of her invocation to Wisdom, O Sapientiae is a gentle dance-like piece with echoes of her music familiar from vocal versions. Evidently Renaissance Magi believed repetitive, cyclical sounds could be key to unlocking natural magics. At least that is the ensemble's excuse for including Recercada Segunda by Spanish composer Diego Ortiz. A delightfully perky and lively piece in an imaginative consort version by Palisander, it needs no excuses.
Delyth Field is a Japanese-Welsh composer [see her interview on the Prxludes website]. Her Kagura Suite for recorders was written for Palisander as part of the National Centre for Early Music and BBC Radio 3’s Young Composer Award 2021, with the composer taking first prize in the 18-25 category. The work is inspired by the oldest form of dance in Japan, Kagura, a ritual ceremonial dance from the Shinto religion. There are three movements - Kami Mai, Sparrow Dance, Gion Geisha. In them Field mixes folk-like inspiration with more contemporary playing techniques. The first movement has a rather fife and drum feel to it whilst the second is busy yet rather free. In the third and final movement we seem to get more Japanese elements merging in. The result is an engaging piece, imaginatively written for the instruments.
There is magic of a different sort in Henry Purcell's Fairy Queen. We hear three movements - a charming, yet lively jig; the touching 'If love's a sweet passion'; and the lively jig. Maddelena Casulana was the first female composer to see her music published in her lifetime, and we hear an arrangement of one of her madrigals, Il vostro dipartir, in a version that is both fluid and engaging.
We move on to the Music of the Spheres next. First with a plainchant-like piece, the anonymous 12th century Naturalis Concordia Vocum cum Planetis, intended to illustrate the understanding of Music of the Spheres during the Middle Ages. Then comes a contemporary piece by Miriam Monaghan, Kepler's Planets inspired by the work of German Renaissance astrologer and mathematician, Johannes Kepler. He set about discovering the ‘true harmony of the world’ by aligning the angular velocities of a planet’s orbit with the natural harmonic series. The result is a briefly notated theme for each planet published in Harmonices Mundi (1619) and these provide the thematic inspiration for the movements of Monaghan's piece. There are six planets considered - Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Terre, Venus, Mercury. Each movement is preceded by a reading, by Connor Byrne, of a poem describing the characteristics of the planet. Monaghan's music is fond of using repeated motifs in multiple layers to create mobile and appealing textures that rather aptly circle round. The music moves from quiet and concentrated Saturn, to lively Jupiter, slow Mars, a rather formal dance for Terre, lively yet stately Venus and brightly fleet Mercury.
The final movement of Tartini's Devil's Trill Sonata rather takes us into a different world, mashing up Tartini's music with contemporary recorder techniques to create something rather vivid.
The most popular form of ornamentation during the 16th century was diminutions, based on dividing the notated music into smaller, logical passages. The Italian madrigal Anchor che col Partire by Cipriano de Rore was a hugely popular choice for other composers to write diminutions on, and here we hear those of , Riccardo Rognoni published in 1592. Slow and elegant at first then getting more and more elaborate.
Two Balkan dances follow, Mandilatos & Omorfoula. I am not sure of the links to the disc's theme, but they are a lively mix of the folk and the exotic ending in a wonderfully mad rush. We finish with an engaging piece by the English composer Anthony Holbourne, The Fairy Round.
Double, Double Toil & Trouble
[1] Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV 565 - Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
[2] The Tryals and Condemnation of Three Notorious Witches - Broadside Ballad (1682)
[3] Englesche Fortuyn - Jan Pietersz Sweelinck (1621)
[4] O Virtus Sapientiae - Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)
[5] Recercada Segunda - Diego Ortiz (1510-1570)
[6-8] Kagura Suite for Recorders - Delyth Field (b. 1999)
[9-11] Suite from the Fairy Queen Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
[12] Il vostro dipartir - Maddelena Casulana (c.1544-c.1590)
[13] Naturalis Concordia Vocum cum Planetis - Anon. (12th Century)
[14-25] Kepler’s Planets - Miriam Monaghan (b. 1990)
[26] ‘The Devil’s Trill’ - Giuseppe Tartini (1692- 1770)
[27] Anchor che col Partire - Cipriano de Rore (1515-1565) / Riccardo Rognoni (1550-1620)
[28] Mandilatos & Omorfoula - Traditional Balkan arr. Palisander
[29] The Fairie Round - Antony Holborne (1545- 1602)
Palisander (Tabea Debus, Lydia Gosnell, Miriam Monaghan & Caoimhe de Paor)
Recorded at St John’s, Loughton, 2023
Palisander
Double, Double Toil & Trouble is available from Palisander's website.
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