Dowland Lindberg

The Orpheus in England title of this release refers to the fact that both John Dowland and Henry Purcell were honored with the "Orpheus" designation after their deaths, nearly 100 years apart. The booklet for this Swedish release even comes with an anonymous poem telling the deceased Purcell to "Touch but thy Lyre, the Stones will come and dance themselves into a Tomb." The unusual idea of connecting the two composers, who shared a common tendency toward a mixture of melancholy and daring harmonic thinking, works well, and there are many lovely moments here.

Naxos has collected its four volume traversal of the lute music into a handy slipcase. All the volumes are available singly, but you can also buy the four together as a quartet of excellence, presided over by Nigel North, the acknowledged hero of the hour. What follows is a reprise of two volumes already reviewed - volumes 1 and 3 - and a look at volumes 2 and 4.

NB Ultra Extended Playing Time - This product can only be played on a machine with SACD capability (super audio single layer). It cannot be played on a conventional CD player. This pioneering recording, which was first released in 1995 as a set of four conventional CDs, contains the complete solo lute pieces ascribed to John Dowland. As opposed to the composer’s lute songs and instrumental dances, which Dowland himself carefully prepared for publication, his lute solos have survived in much less reliable versions. Jakob Lindberg, lute professor at the Royal College of Music, brought all of his expertise to bear in preparing the scores and choosing among variant versions for his recordings, and also wrote the informative liner notes included in this edition.

John Dowland - The Collected Works - The Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley (1997) {Decca–L'Oiseau-Lyre 12CDs}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 3.83 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 2.07 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 191 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1997 Decca / L'Oiseau-Lyre | 452 563-2
Classical / Renaissance / Vocal Music / Chamber Music / Lute

Both the music and this actual product are masterpieces. John Dowland's collected works here - covering 12 compact discs - exhibit the depth and power of this composer, a composer who many now regard as suffering from clinical depression. I doubt that the issue of the diagnosis of Dowland's depression can ever be settled, however, it is certainly obvious from his music, so completely on display here, that he was a man with very dark depths and corners in his mind. Dowland's various manifestations and "takes" on his own tune, "Flow my tears"/"Lachrimae" are here. This tune has haunted me ever since I first heard it when I was a child. It seems to sum up Dowland's feelings - at least Dowland seems to have thought so.

With her almost supernaturally clear and agile soprano, Emma Kirkby has enchanted audiences ever since she first appeared on the Early Music scene in the 1970s. And as the art of historically informed performance has become more and more widely appreciated, so has her style of singing, to the extent that she in 2007 was included in a listing of ‘the 20 greatest sopranos ever’ made by the BBC Music Magazine. Throughout her career, Emma Kirkby has made a large number of recordings of a wide range of music. Released on the occasion of her 60th birthday, the present collection celebrates her collaboration with BIS, which has resulted in ten discs to date.

The Stockholm Chamber Brass here presents a well-played program of Renaissance music arranged for modern brass, with the pluses and caveats that implies. The music’s fantastic and very well-selected: Susato, Dowland, Monteverdi, Gesualdo. The program itself smartly combines these, moving from lively dances and martial airs to arias and slow works of great beauty. Many tracks add percussion to the mix. The Monteverdi ‘moresca’ (track 25) is irresistible. The brass ensemble plays marvelously throughout, especially in slower, more introspective selections.