17th Century Playlist

Songs by Battista, Boësset, Camus, Cavalli, Dowland, Guedron, M Lambert, Landi, Lanier and Moulinie

Ed Lyon (tenor); Elizabeth Kenny (lute, guitar, theorbo), Siobhán Armstrong (triple harp, irish harp), Rodolfo Richter, Jane Gordon (violin), Reiko Ichise (viola da gamba)

Delphian DCD34220 61:30 mins

The single song was a familiar and popular unit of 17th-century music, as it is in today’s radio and online playlists (and equally as in mixtapes and, in their day, on jukeboxes). This selection brings together catchy and tuneful examples from three national traditions: from Italy, by the Venetian Cavalli (an opera aria) and the Roman Stefano Landi; from France by Pierre Guédron, Étienne Moulinié (in Italian), Michel Lambert, Antoine Boësset and Sébastien Le Camus; and from England by Nicholas Lanier and John Dowland.

The voice is accompanied by a rich, keyboardless array of continuo instruments, with Elizabeth Kenny on lute, theorbo and guitar, Siobhán Armstrong on harps (including the fragile-sounding Irish harp), and Reiko Ichise on viola da gamba. Rodolfo Richter and Jane Gordon contribute ritornellos on two violins, and take the lead in two instrumental interludes, ‘patchwork’ sonatas by the Bresciaborn Giovanni Battista Fontana.

Ed Lyon sings all three languages with great clarity and alertness to the sense of the words, ornaments his line idiomatically and displays an appealing ease and evenness of voice production across all registers. But his operatic-style projection into a church acoustic, coupled with the busy activity of the instruments – sometimes improvised and sometimes, palpably, newly invented – threatens the essential chamber-music nature of the medium. Only towards the end of the disc, with Dowland’s ‘My thoughts are wing’d with hopes’ for voice and lute alone, does the enticing possibility present itself of a different, more intimate approach to 17th-century song. Anthony Burton PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★