Phantasm

The Art of Fugue is Bach’s final composition and one of his most challenging. In this album Phantasm and its director Laurence Dreyfus showcase all the hidden beauties of the composer’s magnum opus, arguably the pinnacle of the fugue genre.

The Gramophone Award-winning Phantasm celebrates William Lawes with a sublime collection of premiere recordings with guest musician Elizabeth Kenny. Described as ‘one of the greatest collections of ensemble dance music ever composed', Lawes' Royal Consort is full of astounding moments of striking musical invention. Guest musicians Elizabeth Kenny on theorbo, Emily Ashton on tenor viol and organist Daniel Hyde join Phantasm to honour the celebrated English Renaissance composer. This sublime collection boasts a range and depth of expression, which excites both mind and body through Lawes' startlingly individual pieces.

In this recording, the expert violists of Phantasm return to the unconventional yet brilliant polyphonist Matthew Locke. Under the guidance of Laurence Dreyfus, Phantasm presents the second half of Locke’s Little Consort , composed for treble, tenor and bass viol, and pairs it with three suites from the Flat Consort for my cousin Kemble whose unusual grouping comprises treble and two bass viols. Both sets are accompanied by a chordal bass instrument, in this instance the leading theorbo player Elizabeth Kenny. Locke’s experimental, not to say libertarian, impulse pervades the works, and yet the composer remains grounded in the traditional ethos of strict counterpoint, standing as one of the last champions of the once treasured great polyphonic tradition. More than 400 years later, his music remains as fresh as ever.

This recording from the award-winning viol consort focuses on an important 16th century composer and radical thinker Christopher Tye.

Phantasm adds to its critically-acclaimed repertory of English viol consort music with the first recording in what will be a series exploring the music of Matthew Locke.

In his Four-Part Consorts, John Jenkins (1592–1678) parades his much-vaunted contrapuntal prowess that is marked by a fanatical devotion to the equality of four independent parts. Frequently turbulent and given to frenetic activity, this music charts the interactions of a band of like-minded spirits obsessed with lively struggle and restless soul-searching. The incessant peregrinations of Jenkins’s roving harmonies are heady stuff and make moments of calm and valediction all the more deserved and poignant.

This is the third and final instalment of the Well-Tempered Consort series (5 Diapasons, Gramophone Editor’s Choice, BBC Music Magazine Chamber Choice). In this programme devised by its director Laurence Dreyfus, the viol consort Phantasm continues to shine new light on the fugues from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier interspersed with some of the composer’s most harmonically adventurous experiments from the Clavierübung III. This polyphonic feast also includes two works from the Inventions and Sinfonias as well as the Fantasia in G major BWV 572, or Pièce d’orgue as it is sometimes called, which boasts an extraordinary closing pedal point. A fitting end to a remarkable journey!

The booklet notes for this Scottish audiophile release, perhaps surprisingly in view of American-British annotator and group leader Laurence Dreyfus' background in academic musicology, are models of their kind. They make the best possible case for the viol music of early seventeenth century composer John Ward, who usually plays third or fourth fiddle (or viol) to Gibbons, Dowland, Purcell, and even John Jenkins among general listeners and specialists alike. In both his prose (given in English only) and his interpretations, Dreyfus and his Phantasm consort capture the pleasantly meandering quality of Ward's viol pieces, which lack the melancholy of Dowland's, the pungent and daring dissonance of Gibbons', or the general brilliance of Purcell's.

The miracle of Bach’s music is that you can arrange it for any type or number of instruments, and it’ll still come out shining. This joyful album features a selection of the composer’s keyboard works framed by two movements from the Musical Offering, usually performed by flute and strings. Phantasm, a consort of five viols—early versions of the modern cello—bring aspects of Bach’s thrilling counterpoint to light with expressive touches here and there, and often a lightness and variety of texture that’s hard or impossible to achieve midflow on the organ, harpsichord or piano. Rarely have Bach’s fugues sounded so dancelike, light and fleet, especially the great E-flat Prelude and Fugue BWV 552 or the Prelude No. 24 from Book 1 of The Well-Tempered Clavier.