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GRAMOPHONE (07/2013)
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Harmonia Mundi
HMU907557
Reviewer: William Yeoman
O’Dette plays lute music by the man they called ‘The Divine’
What better vehicle for the artistry of one of today’s most gifted lutenists could there be than the music of a 16th-century lutenist whose compositions and playing so ravished the senses of his contemporaries that they called him Il Divino? Francesco da Milano (1497-1543) was part of a musical family and a large part of his career was spent in the service of various popes as well as working for Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici. His 125-plus surviving compositions comprise fantasias or ricercars and intabulations of vocal music including motets, madrigals and chansons.
As O’Dette points out in his booklet-note, there is evidence tat 16th-century lutenists organised their music into suites comprising a tightly structured contrapuntal fantasia and/or more improvisatory ricercar, an intabulation and a dance or group of dances. Since no dances survive by Francesco, O’Dette has organised works by the composer into suites which finish with intabulations of lively, dance like French chansons such as Claudin de Sermisy’s ‘Vignon vignetta’. The result is a truly ravishing program in which Francesco’s masterly control of drama trough register, texture and ornament is fully brought out by O’Dette’s highly expressive, cantabile and colouristic playing. These works are miniatures, yes; but even in such short works as Ricecar 4, which docks in at just under a minute, the lyrical intensity is as profound as that in the longer Ricercar 51, one of the finest pieces selected for this recording by our own latter day Orpheus.
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