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Reviewer:
Lindsay Kemp It may seem unfortunate for a two CD set to total only 83 minutes, but then this is John Jenkins’s ‘complete four-part consort music’, so that’s how it has to be. Thankfully it sells for the price of a single disc, which was presumably the original plan. Seventeen fantasias and two pavans then, just a small segment of over 800 instrumental works by a figure who was respected and liked as a composer and man by his contemporaries, and is loved by viol players today as a provider of expertly written and grateful ensemble material for them to play. And while to the lay-listener his smoothly mellifluous music will probably never seem daring next to that of his excitable contemporary William Lawes, the extended encounter these discs provide leaves no doubt that Jenkins was a true master of the viol consort. For this is more than just a composer who never put a foot wrong. Here is a figure who, with deftly perfect counterpoint, assured harmony and modulation and confident handling of rhythmic flow, can lead you through a succession of moods with such quiet skill that sometimes you don’t notice when or how they changed. Indeed, his most striking expressive habits are the awing one of temporarily distilling the music almost to nothing (as in the central portions of Fantasias Nos 7 and 16) and the immensely comforting one of setting you down tenderly at the end of a piece (as in Nos 6 and 10). This is music of gentle progress, firmly on the side of the angels. Fretwork can be expected to present him in a shining light, and they do. In an acoustic that is intimate but never starved of air, they render the part-writing with vivid clarity, each line sweetly singing, while functioning as a superbly balanced unit that can dance to the folk-like liveliness of Fantasias Nos 6 and 14 as readily as they can find the sonorous depths in No 9 or the pavans. More than just the ‘record of record’ it at first appears, this is a fine and worthy release. |
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