On the penultimate day of the 2009 Lufhansa Festival of Baroque Music, Phantasm – an award-winning consort of viols – presented what their founder director Laurence Dreyfus described in his pre-performance talk as 'the glories of English viol consort music.' To be more precise, they performed a wonderful selection of Fancy-Musick.
As clarified by Dreyfus in his programme notes, 'this was music which neither sounded quite like choral music for voices nor was at all suited to dancing. In fact, it was the beginning of the first truly independent instrumental polyphony, and led to an outpouring of part-music which liberated itself from the written word (the 'dittie') and gave fee rein to a composer's imagination – to his fancy or fantazy.'
The composers represented at this concert were Robert Parsons (c. 1535-1571/2), William Byrd (c. 1540-1623), Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), John Jenkins (1592-1678), William Lawes (1602-1645) and Henry Purcell (1659-1695). Parsons' inclusion surprised me – isn't he a touch early for the baroque period? – and I am far from convinced that Purcell's fantazias were composed specifically for viols.
However, the selected repertoire gave us valuable insight into the organic growth of the genre. The pre-performance discussion between Catherine Bott and Dreyfus was particularly helpful and fortunately it will be broadcast in Radio 3's Discovering Music series on Sunday 22 November. I admit that it is still unclear to me how members of Phantasm communicated without bar lines in their parts in Jenkins' compositions, but hopefully the broadcast will clarify matters.
Most probably it would be hard to find better performances of these pieces than those presented by Phantasm at this concert. Chosen tempi felt just right, polyphonic structure was transparent, rhythm was tight and the virtuosity of the players (in particular of treble viol players Dreyfus and Wendy Gillespie) was impressive. It is also of note how exemplary the musical discipline of the ensemble is.
Nevertheless, I felt that – although obviously fully committed to the music – director Dreyfus played in an introverted manner which, in turn, characterised the performance of the whole ensemble. In his pre-performance talk Dreyfus spoke passionately about the six composers and their pieces in the programme. Indeed, passion is evident even in his programme notes. But, in performance, the passion of the words did not translate into daring communication of the soul. Am I asking for too much?
By Agnes Kory
Photos: Phantasm by Coneyl Jay.
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