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Reminiscent of the cross-cultural crossover projects of L’Arpeggiata and Hespèrion XXI, this imaginative, deliciously sombre recording brings together 17th-century English and Italian Baroque and 20th-century Latin American songs whose composers and poets find common ground in love and war. All the Latin American songs here, such as Jara’s ‘Te recuerdo Amanda’ and Méndez’s ‘Cucurrucucú paloma’, are iconic and have been performed over the decades by singers as various as Joan Baez, Caetano Veloso and Mercedes Sosa. The direct simplicity of words and music often belies darker personal and political undercurrents.
For example, in ‘Te recuerdo Amanda’, the story of two young lovers snatching intimate moments during lunchbreaks before they are parted as the man is called to arms reflects Jara’s painful separation from his wife. By contrast, the subjects of the texts set by Monteverdi and Purcell are more classically idealised, more remote, even abstract. It is the music that moves them down to earth, moving our passions in the process.
Not just the music, but tenor Nicholas Mulroy’s glorious singing, the diction clear, the phrasing natural, the voice supple and multi-hued. Just listen to Purcell’s ‘By beauteous softness’, its affective languor contrasting with Mulroy’s crisp dramatisation of the composer’s ‘In the black dismal dungeon of despair’.
The Latin American material is just as successful, and perhaps even more compelling for being presented in such a novel context: witness Mulroy’s lucid tenderness in ‘Cucurrucucú paloma’, Marín’s bolero ‘Silencio’ and Silvio Rodríguez’s ‘La gaviota’, with which the programme ends.
Toby Carr (modern and baroque guitars and theorbo) and Elizabeth Kenny (archlute, baroque guitar and theorbo) transcend stylistic categories to bring surprising colours, expressive textures and a wistful intimacy to the songs, whether solo or together. The aptly named quartet of strings Music for a While aren’t heard often enough. But when they are, as in the Purcell ritornelli, their eloquence is dazzling. |
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