Ancient and modern: Liam Byrne, a viola da gamba and a laptop at Baroque at the Edge

Liam Byrne (Photo Tom Roelofs)

Muhly, Finnis, Milea, Mills, Marais, Picforth, Sainte Colombe; Liam Byrne; Baroque at the Edge at LSO St Lukes Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 October 2018 Star rating: 4.5 (★★★★½)
Music for viola da gamba and laptop, a fascinating and sometimes powerful recital which mixed the viola da gamba with a very contemporary twist

Liam Byrne is one of those performers who pops up in a variety of guises, working with everyone from Emma Kirkby to Damon Albarn. Technically a period instrument specialist playing the bass viol and viola da gamba (we caught him a few years ago playing viol duets at one of the Courtauld Gallery's late events), Byrne also plays a lot of contemporary music, taking his instrument into the 21st century [he was one of the performers in Alex Mills' powerful new opera, Dear Marie Stopes, see my review]. There is an interesting Q&A with Byrne on the This is Solo website published in advance of Byrne's 2016 recital in the SOLO concert series.

So Liam Byrne's afternoon recital at LSO St Luke's as part of Baroque at the Edge on Saturday 5 January 2019 presented a fascinating combination of the very old and the very new. Byrne played a viola da gamba, an instrument whose origins date back to the 15th or 16th century, yet most of the repertoire of the concert was very new, with music by Nico Muhly (born 1981), Samuel Milea (born 1995), Edmund Finnis (born 1984), and Alex Mills alongside works by Marin Marais, Picforth and Sainte Colombe. Many of the contemporary pieces included electronics, provided by Byrne's laptop, which varied from providing a drone background in Nico Muhly's Drones and Viola da Gamba to live-processing electronics giving a variety of different acoustics and reverberations in Alex Mills' Suspensions and Solutions. And the electronics was not confined to the new pieces, for Picforth's In Nomine Byrne created an intriguing new version of this Tudor piece.

The event started casually, with extracts from Nico Muhly's Arvo-Pärt-like Long Phrases for the Wilton Diptych playing in the background, then at some point Byrne started playing his viola da gamba, the lights went down and we moved into Muhly's Drones and Viola da Gamba where the electronics provided the drones and Byrne played a very modern take on 'divisions on a ground' on his gamba, moving from the meditative to the violent and back.

Diverse tapestry: Clare Norburn's 'Burying the Dead' at Baroque at the Edge

Clare Norburn: Burying the Dead - Ceruleo (Photo Robert Piwko)

Henry Purcell, Clare Norburn Burying the Dead; Niall Ashdown, Ceruleo, dir: Thomas Guthrie; Baroque at the Edge Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 October 2018 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Clare Norburn's latest concert drama takes us into the dying Henry Purcell's bedroom, populated by characters from his life and from his dramas

Clare Norburn: Burying the Dead - Ceruleo (Photo Robert Piwko)

Clare Norburn is becoming known for her concert dramas, music theatre pieces dealing usually with a classical composer which combine plays with music with drama in a way which illuminates the subject. I first saw one of them in 2013 when Breaking the Rules was presented at BREMF, with Finbar Lynch as the dying Gesualdo and the Marian Consort singing the composer's music, madrigals and sacred pieces, in a way which illuminated the composer's thoughts, and Norburn's subsequent concert dramas have treated subjects as diverse as Galileo (whose father was a composer), Hildegard of Bingen, and Beethoven.

Clare Norburn's Burying the Dead debuted last year and having been performed at a number of venues and festivals in the UK, came to London on Saturday 5 January 2019 as part of the Baroque at the Edge festival at LSO St Luke's. The work is written for the early music ensemble Ceruleo, Emily Owen and Jenni Harper (sopranos), Satoko Doi-Luck (harpsichord), Kate Conway (cello), Toby Carr (theorbo) with actor Niall Ashdown, directed by Thomas Guthrie. The piece takes us into the composer Henry Purcell's bedroom as lays dying of a fever in 1695, and his imagination peoples the room with both real beings and characters from pieces he has written.

We have very little concrete biographical information about Purcell, so Norburn has had a relatively free reign in terms of the details. She brings in the known facts and weaves about them a convincing narrative which encompasses Henry remembering key moments from his life such as the Great Plague of 1665 when Henry would have been six, and the Fire of London in 1666, when he was seven, as well as the death of Queen Mary. But also the deaths in childhood of many of the Purcell's children.