Orlando Gibbons - Royal Fantasies, Music for Viols, Vol. 1
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Royal Fantasies - Music for Viols, Vol. 1
Orlando Gibbons
Label: Metronome Recordings Ltd
Catalogue No: METCD 1033
Discs: 1
Royal Fantasies - Music for Viols, Vol. 1
Orlando Gibbons
Label: Metronome Recordings Ltd
Catalogue No: METCD 1033
Discs: 1
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Released in 2000 this was the first disc in Concordia's complete Gibbons viol consort music series. The core of this disc are the nine supposedly "royal" fantasias for three viols which, unusually for the XVIIth century, were published as a set, and which Concordia here record complete in their original order. It has been suggested that these nine pieces may well include a code or a mini set of "enigma" variations. The theme itself is never stated, but a series of melodic fingerprints recur throughout.
Another enigma is the Pavan de le Roye, to which Mark Levy, director of Concordia, has provided his own solution. Only three parts of the original five survive and the most elaborate treble and tenor voices are missing. So over a two week holiday he reconstructed a version of what they might have been. Another novelty is the decision to add a harpsichord to the consort. Levy says: "I see Gibbons himself at the heart of these pieces, so there has to be a keyboard and it has ti have a creative role".
Others have used chamber organ, but contemporary XVIIth century theorist and composer Thomas Mace particularly recommends the harpsichord or virginal, and Levy agrees: "Whereas the organ is a blending instrument, the harpsichord is the opposite - it's like lemon juice, it helps bring out the flavour of the other instruments."
"There's a bit of Gibbons in just about all our concerts, partly because we love him", said the group's director Mark Levy, "but because we find that our audiences really respond to his music, particularly the contrapuntally complex works like the In Nomines. There's always a very prayerful, personal quality to these pieces, but they also have something very public about them. Gibbons, like Bach, is a high priest of the sensual mathematics of counterpoint. He understands not only how to write fine imitative polyphony but, crucially, how to shape it into a language in wich logic and emotion are perfectly united. This is the effect you experience at the end of the five part in Nomine No. 2, as the galloping lines arch their way to a close with a quick tangible inevitability. In concerts, it's often followed by one of those still silences in which players, audience, and the spirit of the composer seem to merge into complete understanding. Most performers of Gibbons feel he was something of a romantic. Take the fourth of the six-part Fantasias. Once you have heard the opening, or better still, played it, you'll never forget it, there are all these new, gorgeous scrunches. And the the two four-part Fantasias have this glowing sonority produced by their incredibly widely spaced parts shaped by Gibbons' originl dynamic and tempo markings and punctuated by unexpected bursts of folksong.
Gibbons also sets really good texts, unlike Byrd who, I am sorry to say, set mainly doggerel. I think Gibbons had a real poetic sensibility, which is something I hope we have captured in the consort songs we've recorded with soprano Rachel Elliott."
(From a conversation between Simon Heighes and Mark Levy in Gramophone, October 2000)
"These are tight, intelligent and aurally attractive performances [...] Concordia also shows plenty of life."
(Lindsay Kemp for Gramophone)
Another enigma is the Pavan de le Roye, to which Mark Levy, director of Concordia, has provided his own solution. Only three parts of the original five survive and the most elaborate treble and tenor voices are missing. So over a two week holiday he reconstructed a version of what they might have been. Another novelty is the decision to add a harpsichord to the consort. Levy says: "I see Gibbons himself at the heart of these pieces, so there has to be a keyboard and it has ti have a creative role".
Others have used chamber organ, but contemporary XVIIth century theorist and composer Thomas Mace particularly recommends the harpsichord or virginal, and Levy agrees: "Whereas the organ is a blending instrument, the harpsichord is the opposite - it's like lemon juice, it helps bring out the flavour of the other instruments."
"There's a bit of Gibbons in just about all our concerts, partly because we love him", said the group's director Mark Levy, "but because we find that our audiences really respond to his music, particularly the contrapuntally complex works like the In Nomines. There's always a very prayerful, personal quality to these pieces, but they also have something very public about them. Gibbons, like Bach, is a high priest of the sensual mathematics of counterpoint. He understands not only how to write fine imitative polyphony but, crucially, how to shape it into a language in wich logic and emotion are perfectly united. This is the effect you experience at the end of the five part in Nomine No. 2, as the galloping lines arch their way to a close with a quick tangible inevitability. In concerts, it's often followed by one of those still silences in which players, audience, and the spirit of the composer seem to merge into complete understanding. Most performers of Gibbons feel he was something of a romantic. Take the fourth of the six-part Fantasias. Once you have heard the opening, or better still, played it, you'll never forget it, there are all these new, gorgeous scrunches. And the the two four-part Fantasias have this glowing sonority produced by their incredibly widely spaced parts shaped by Gibbons' originl dynamic and tempo markings and punctuated by unexpected bursts of folksong.
Gibbons also sets really good texts, unlike Byrd who, I am sorry to say, set mainly doggerel. I think Gibbons had a real poetic sensibility, which is something I hope we have captured in the consort songs we've recorded with soprano Rachel Elliott."
(From a conversation between Simon Heighes and Mark Levy in Gramophone, October 2000)
"These are tight, intelligent and aurally attractive performances [...] Concordia also shows plenty of life."
(Lindsay Kemp for Gramophone)