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All the playing here is on an international level: beautifully balanced, marvellously flexible in phrasing and tempo, with much well-judged space in the phrasing. In addition there is lots of variety in the playing style, with many touches of lightness and humour. The recorded quality is also of the best: everything is crystal-clear all the time, though always favouring the often jaw-dropping performances of the Norwegian/English/ Croatian lutenist Jadran Duncumb. The only question is how this competes with the already astonishingly strong catalogue of previous recordings of Dowland’s Lachrimae, going back to the still impressive 1968 LP of the Wenzinger Consort with Eugen Müller-Dombois as lutenist.
If you prefer a straightforward account that follows the order of Dowland’s print – at least in having the seven Lachrimae pavanes together as a unit – and keeps more or less to the printed notes, the version by Phantasm with Elizabeth Kenny will probably be your choice. Alberto Rasi and the Accademia Strumentale Italiana take a different approach (partly following Jordi Savall). They follow each pavane with a galliard (never musically related); and they vary the instrumentation throughout, sometimes without lute, sometimes with lute alone, sometimes with the viols playing pizzicato, and so on. And very little of the lute-playing follows what is in Dowland’s publication. The aim is evidently to add variety. I am not at all sure that this does Dowland a service.
The writer of the informative booklet note (Renato Calza) was obviously not warned of the approach taken by these musicians. |
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