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Reviewer:
Lindsay
Kemp This disc has two themes to bind it: English keyboard music of the 17th century, and pieces composed over a ground bass. That, in case you should have doubted it, is a pretty rich field – ‘Grounds for Pleasure’.
Colin Booth is a harpsichord maker as well as player (one of his instruments can be heard in Florilegium’s new Brandenburg Concertos recording, reviewed on page 24), and here he performs on a 1661 instrument he himself has restored, French in style but by an Italian maker, meaning that a little Italianate attack and fire (thanks to brass stringing) joins with sufficient sustain to give it a touch of Gallic nobility. It comes into its own most in the melancholy grandeur of the grounds by Byrd and Tomkins, and Gibbons’s marvellous Pavan Lord Salisbury, yet the success of Booth’s performances also stems from tempi which take time to enjoy not just the harpsichord’s tone but the richness and lyricism that is there in the music. Thus, even with a reduced registration, William Inglot’s The Leaves Bee Greene also emerges strongly, its beautiful tune positioned compellingly in the bass, and only Blow’s Ground in Gamut Flatt comes across as a little dogged.
Booth also makes imaginative use of the instrument’s colour range, however; this harpsichord comes with 8' and 4' registers that cannot be coupled, which, intentionally or otherwise, throws the emphasis from loud and soft sounds on to the exploration of different timbres. The use of the 4', sounding an octave higher, to accompany the right hand in Purcell’s A New Ground or Gibbons’s Italian Ground is especially effective, lending the music delicacy and perhaps even a touch of ironic detachment.
There a few
little note-smudges here and there but the recording is good, and overall this
is a characterful, honest and engaging recital. |
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