What the Critics say... 

 

William Byrd: For My Ladye Nevell  

Harpsichord and Virginals

Deux-Elles DXL1136

 

 

 

BBC Music Magazine  July 2009

Byrd's ability to concentrate intense musical ideas into compact forms was second to none amongst his generation, and this selection of pieces from My Ladye Nevells Booke gives a taste of his subtle bur ceaseless versatility. Virtuoso variations over ground-basses or on popular songs contrast with courtly pavans and sprightly galliards, the dances favoured by the Virgin Queen.

Terence Charlston underscores Byrd's 'grave and stately' qualities in these sober, searching performances: he plumbs the melancholic depths of the fifth pavan and gives a visceral account of the sonorous eighth. His robust, muscular technique makes light of Byrd 's deceptively tricky scales and fiddly ornaments. These are resolved and rigorous interpretations, at times a shade unyielding - for a more rhythmically pliant approach, consider Skip Sempe's readings of some of these works on Auvidis E 861l.

Charlston plays two, subtly contrasted instruments that lend delicate variety to the sound palette: a copy of an early Flemish virginals, its muted tones particularly effective in Byrd's more imitate works, and a copy of a later Flemish harpsichord, the brilliant, ringing sound of which comes into its own in Byrd's programmatic piece 'The Battell', complete with rousing evocations of military trumpets and pipes.

A recommendable album, then, but not one that displaces Davitt Moroney's recording of all the Ladye Nevell pieces, available on his monumental set of Byrd's complete keyboard works: 493 minutes, six different instruments, plus a 45,000-word booklet to boot.  

Kate Bolton

PERFORMANCE ****

RECORDING ****


 Back to Recordings