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