Tag: John Dowland

John Dowland And His Cheery Pals, Tim Mead & Sergio Bucheli, Wigmore Hall, 16 September 2024

John Dowland, CC BY-SA 4.0 click here for details

OK, I have a confession to make. The Wigmore Hall did not title this concert “John Dowland And His Cheery Pals”; it merely promised us the superb countertenor Tim Mead and the also excellent lutenist/theorboist Sergio Bucheli.

On arrival, I made a bee-line to the desk where a young woman was handing out programmes. I told Janie that the programme was bound to include a lyric sheet so we all could sing along.

Don’t be ridiculous…

…said Janie.

Have fun…

…said the far more open-minded young lady.

We found ourselves sitting next to a Scottish woman named Fiona, who had sung in her youth and was clearly a huge fan of Tim Mead. She said she might inadvertently sing along, which Janie tells me Fiona sort-of did – under her breath. I chose not to sing along, partly because Tim Mead sings in the wrong pitch for me. I might have tried singing a whole octave down, but wouldn’t have wanted to upstage Tim that way.

More seriously, it was a truly lovely concert. Here is a link to that very programme and song sheet if you want to see what the whole thing contained.

I was familiar with many of the John Dowland songs and lute fantasias, whereas some of the material by other composers was new to me.

We were particularly taken with John Danyel’s three part song, “Mrs M E her funeral tears for the death of her husband”…

…did those guys compete for maximum misery in the subject matter of their songs in those days?…

…a truly beautiful sound that has made me seek out some more John Danyel to hear after the concert.

Here is a link to the first part of the Mrs ME song – don’t be put off if you see a line through the link – it should work for you even if you are not a YouTube Music subscriber.

Tim Mead does a lot of his work with La Nuova Musica – in fact Janie and I didn’t realise that we had seen Tim sing before at one of their concerts – at St John’s Smith Square in 2015:

La Nuova Musica, St John’s Smith Square, 20 March 2015

We had seen Sergio Bucheli several times before, most recently at Wigmore Hall just a few months ago:

All The Bs: Biber, Benjamin, Byrd, Bach…& Brett – Brett Dean Concert, Wigmore Hall, 20 April 2024

We enjoyed every bit of the Dowland and Pals concert, despite the downcast subject matter. With Dowland you can be pretty sure about what you are going to get. Otherwise it would be a bit like going to a Leonard Cohen concert and complaining that the songs are miserable.

Tim Mead and Sergio Bucheli seemed very much at home in this late Renaissance space, although my guess is that home base for them is Baroque music from 70 to 100 years later than the works we heard. I cannot find a sample of these two performing late Renaissance works, but this sampler from their recent album about Purcell And His Perky Pals (OK, it’s actually named Beauteous Softness)…

… has inspired me to stream that album as soon as I have some proper listening time…which might be as soon as 24 hours after the Dowland & Pals concert.

New Elizabethan Award Showcase: Hey Nonie No Music And Far More Besides, Wigmore Hall, Lunchtime, 9 February 2019

I was keen to see this concert of young award-winning artistes, including two young guitarists, Jesse Flowers and Andrey Lebedev, who would be performing Elizabethan music. Actually, the Elizabethan theme included both Elizabethan periods – i.e. Tudor music and also music from the last 60 or so years.

Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall resource on this concert, which is not enormously forthcoming with detail but gives you an idea.

Ian Pittaway gets really irritated when I mention Janie’s aversion to the lyrics of a certain type of Tudor secular song, which she describes as “Hey Nonie No” music.

Ian P points out, perhaps with some veracity, that there is only one Elizabethan song that actually contains the offending words,
“Hey Nonie No”. Well, Ian ran out of road today, as the concert contained, amongst many other things, Thomas Morley’s It Was A Lover And His Lass, which certainly contains that line. I felt some of Janie’s finger nails digging into the back of my hand when we got to that bit.

But the Dowland songs were his usual darker stuff: In Darkness Let Me Dwell, Now O Now I Needs Must Part and Come Heavy Sleep, which Janie and I both tend to prefer both musically and lyrically.

Janie wondered why the words to these more substantial songs are not credited to their authors. I didn’t know the answer to that question but my guess is/was that they are words that had been handed down through oral tradition and that the first time they were published along with (e.g. Dowland’s) music, the authorship was lost in the mists of time. But at the time of writing I seek an authoritative view on this point.

Anyway, below is a more comprehensive list of the music played, taken from the programme.

Both of the guitarists played using modern, vertical fingers on the right hand rather than the horizontal finger technique Ian P is encouraging in me. I must say I thought the Tudor music sounded lovely on the modern guitar in the hands of both of these guitarists.

Janie and I also both enjoyed the modern-Elizabethan solo guitar pieces; Britten’s Nocturnal after John Dowland and Philip Houghton’s Ophelia…a Haunted Sonata. Let’s just say that we found the modern songs too difficult for us.

I had spotted sitting near to us one of my occasional real tennis pals from Lord’s, Michael, who I knew was an accomplished guitarist, as he had studied Benjy (my baritone ukulele/Tudor guitar) with great interest one time at Lord’s.

We chatted with Michael for a while during the interval, choosing not to bother with refreshments at that hour, before hunkering down for the short but more difficult second half of the concert.

Janie and I had never been to a Saturday lunchtime concert before and I’m not sure we’ll be returning on a Saturday lunchtime again in a hurry. It just doesn’t time well with our other regular activities, so it all felt like a bit of a rush, early in the weekend, getting to the Wig on time. Mind you, it is surprisingly easy enough to park around there on a Saturday lunchtime, we learnt…

…and we did very much enjoy the concert. Janie has decided to hedge her bets in the matter of the term “Hey Nonie No” music, by rebranding it as “Ring Around The Rosebuds” music. Very cunning.

Meanwhile I cannot find any examples of these youngsters playing Tudor music on-line, but here is a very young Jesse Flowers playing some Bach lute music transcribed for guitar, beautifully:

Will You Go Walk The Woods So Wild? Paul O’Dette, Lunchtime Concert, Wigmore Hall, 2 October 2017

I used to say that there are only two places left in the world where stewards and patrons still call me young man; Wigmore Hall and Lord’s.

Today I must sadly report that I went to both places and was referred to not once as young man. This is becoming a pattern. What is going on?

Still, apart from my awareness of my fast disappearing “youth”, the lunchtime concert at the Wigmore Hall was an absolute delight. Janie and I both very much enjoy the relaxing nature of this type of music…perhaps it’s our age?

Paul O’Dette is no youngster either – indeed he looks a little like father Christmas these days, making his press photos a little dated, perhaps.

But boy can he play the lute, jamming good with Byrd and Dowland…

…here is the Wigmore Hall resource on this concert, so you can read all about it.

There was a rather lovely Bacheler Pavane and Galliard between the two pieces listed for Bacheler on the above resource.

This was a BBC Radio 3 lunchtime concert, so still available at the time of writing for another four weeks or so if you are in  the right country or can convince the BBC iPlayer that you are – click here.

There was a delightful encore of an Italian Renaissance piece – sadly I missed the name of it and the broadcast missed the piece completely. It was lovely.

As was the whole concert. Very soothing music. I realised that this type of music would suit me very well for when I’m working or relaxing, so I downloaded some and bought a couple of CDs on-line too.

The above double CD was the closest I could find to the concert we heard (and lots more besides). I snapped up the last currently available copy at a sensible price on Amazon, but you might want to look occasionally and/or elsewhere for it.

Janie and I enjoyed a fine lunch at The Wig after the concert, then on to Lord’s (via Noddyland) for the end of season Middlesex Forum and drinks party, not that there was anything to celebrate. Still, the forum went as well as can be expected and it was good to see people at the end of the season.

This evening (the next day), I am mellowing out, listening to Paul O’Dette on the lute, while writing this Ogblog piece. Such sweet sounds.

Laura Snowden, Lunchtime Concert, St John’s Smith Square, 1 December 2016

A planned, much needed break in the middle of a busy day in a busy week.

First stop, Lock and Co. to replace my sorely missed Vermont hat. No blame attached to whatever happened during our Royal Academy evening a few weeks ago; merely to say that Daisy should stick to driving duties and avoid hat-stand duties; while I should retain full responsibility for my own hats whatever other duties I am undertaking.

Then on to St John’s Smith Square for the lunchtime concert.

selfie-with-new-hat-and-enormous-organ
Selfie With New Hat and Enormous Organ

I messaged Daisy with the above picture and caption, to let her know that I had replaced the hat and to show off the fact that I was taking a substantial enough break to take in a lunchtime concert on my tod. The reply:

What the…?

The concert was lovely. We saw Laura Snowden at SJSS a couple of years ago; a very talented young guitarist who comes across very nicely.

The centrepiece of this concert was a new work by Wally Gunn, an American composer who seems to have written this piece especially for Laura under commission of a young composers/performers scheme.

Laura show-pieced the new work by framing it with works by better-known composers, although not especially well-known works. A beautiful Dowland to start. Then Villa-Lobos’s preludes; I realised I knew the first well but had never heard the others before.

I enjoyed the Wally Gunn piece; it was based on Darwin diaries and had some very evocative passages, although the whispered words didn’t really float my Beagle, as it were.

Then a couple of Barrios waltzes and finally a short piece by Rodrigo.

Here is a link to the SJSS site page for the concert…

…and in case SJSS isn’t archiving as it should, here is my permanent link of that page.

Perfect way to set myself up for an afternoon of grind and also for an evening of jamming with DJ on my baritone baroq-ulele. Although, after listening to a virtuoso like Laura Snowden, my own pluckings and strummings are brought into perspective.

 

Joanna MacGregor and Britten Sinfonia, Reverb: Roundhouse, 23 January 2010

We went to two classical concerts with early music leanings at the Roundhouse in the space of three days as part of the Reverb series; we loved both.

This was the first of the two, on the Saturday.

We hadn’t seen Joanna MacGregor before, although we had heard of her. I was aware that she had been a Gresham professor of music.

There was real flare and excitement to this concert; a really interesting blend of early music, south american music and contemporary and jazz themes.

In the moment, I bought a couple of Joanna MacGregor albums on the night:

We’ve listened to these albums a lot and had a lot of enjoyment from them, although they bear little resemblance to the music we heard that night.

Subsequently I bought another one, Play, which reflected at least a couple of the items we heard in the concert.

Here is an interesting video interview with MacGregor on the Telegraph website, made just before this concert.

Anyway, the concert was lovely and left us very excited ahead of the next one, a mere two days away.

Xuefei Yang, Wigmore Hall, 6 February 2009

Even by our enthusiastic standards, three visits to the Wigmore Hall within three weeks is going some.

Xuefei Yang is a superb guitarist, though and this was a very interesting programme:

A real mixture of stuff.

We really liked all of it. And we really liked Xuefei Yang too.

This concert was a very relaxing end to (by the looks of it) a pretty full-on working week.