Harp

Brilliant performance with crystal clear recording and balance of orchestra against harp in all sections. A masterpiece of harp virtuosity if you are among the lucky individuals to own this recording at any price!

The music of Shakespeare's England - ballad tunes, country dances and elegant consorts - seems at first to be quintessentially English. Yet many of these tunes, as popular dances or in the high-art variations of division music, were inspired by Celtic and Spanish styles. In variations, from 17th-century manuscripts and in improvised divisions, 'gypsy' ballads are metamorphosed into exquisite consort music.

Korean-born Dutch harpist Lavinia Meijer states as her goal "to make the harp better known as a solo instrument, with all its possibilities which are often still unknown to the wider audience." With this release she accomplishes her goal, not so much technically as musically. The harp does not do so much here that the attentive listener to the big early film scores won't have heard before. But Meijer's album falls nicely into the group of releases that are reconstructing the virtuoso solo repertoire of a century ago, rediscovering gems that were swept aside by self-serving modernist imperatives.

Boris Tishchenko, often considered to be the direct musical heir of Shostakovich, maintained a prolific output across all genres. The concise vocal trios – one written in memory of the composer’s brother – are alternately plaintive and urgent. The five movements of the Harp Concerto are played without pause, and the work is significant for expanding the harp’s expressive range and requiring the soloist to alternate between two instruments.

Thirteenth-century troubador Gautier de Coincy's blend of mystical religious poetry and the popular tunes to which he set his poems proves irresistible, especially in the Harp Consort's lively renditions. Given the nature of the material, the sheer variety of rhythms, sounds, and colors on this disc is astounding; the vocal soloists are all excellent, the small chorus adept, captivating when it sings in the gutsy peasant style at appropriate moments. Eight purely instrumental numbers are sprinkled throughout the 20 tracks, each a gem, full of colorful effects from the rich-sounding shawm and other period instruments like bagpipe, vielle, and a variety of percussion instruments that thump and shimmer in ways that make you want to dance.

The original semantic value of re-ligio, therefore considered as a restoration of contacts, as a meeting point of distant but related cultures. Referring to the genesis of the work, the composer herself states: Reading these works has significant inner similarities: contemplation and sophistication. The lines from the work of IV Oganov - "the pain of a flower's test", "… The roar of the singing garden grew", "… The revelation of the rose… ", "… The lotus was set on fire by the music", "… The white garden began to resound again with diamond borders… " - encouraged me to a concrete sound perception of this garden. On the other hand, however, all this ecstatic flowering was expressed naturally in Tanzer's reflections on the world in it's entirety. At the basis of the musical rendering of this piece there is in fact the opposition of the bright and diaphanous timbre of the natural harmonics with the sad coloratura of the intervals of minor second and minor third.

Other recent King's Singers' recordings on this label have reaffirmed the ensemble's credentials as compelling advocates of contemporary music. Here, only the most hardhearted of early music purists could fail to find the infectious cocktail of popular and religious Spanish music–largely 16th century–going to their heads, even if the King's Singers add the occasional theatrical embellishment. The music (much of it by "Anon") is organized into five categories, among them "fire" and "water" (with the alternative implications of ardor and alcohol).