Lawes at Wigmore Hall and on TV

Concordia appeared in two concerts in the Wigmore Hall's 400th anniversary series for the fascinating English composer William Lawes (1602-1645) which was devised and directed by Mark Levy.  The series met with universal acclaim in the national press: ‘seductive celebration of an unsung hero’ Telegraph; ‘a terrific display of what makes this consort special’ The Times [ read more ]; ‘an exceptionally cogent concert’ Independent [ read more ].

Concordia's latest CD entitled Knock'd on the Head of music by Lawes has just been released and the group has recorded a Lawes concert  for BBC4 Television which was broadcast on 5 May [ broadcast details ].  You can also read more about Lawes in a feature by Mark Levy in the May issue of BBC Music Magazine.

More awards for Gibbons CD series

Concordia's second CD of music by Orlando Gibbons, entitled Go From My Window (Metronome METCD 1039) has swept the board in France, winning a DIAPASON D'OR  [ critique entière en français ], as well as CHOC DE LA MUSIQUE and 10 DE REPERTOIRE awards, and it was also a Gramophone Editor's Choice.  This follows the success of the first disc in the series, Royal Fantasies (Metronome METCD 1033), which also won international critical acclaim including a CHOC DE LA MUSIQUE award from the French magazine Le Monde de la Musique [ critique entière en français ], an OUTSTANDING rating from BBC Music Magazine, and an award from the German periodical Fonoforum.

‘Nothing short of revelatory. Gibbons emerges here as a composer of far greater subtlety of imagination than hitherto. Concordia's style of playing is intense and sinewy, with a real mission to explore the music's linear logic and the underlying and often changing character of each piece... Mark Levy's way with the treble viol is almost to make it speak, so colourfully modulated and rhythmically supple are his melodic lines’

International Record Review

‘Gibbons is remarkably under-represented on record.  Here for instance is the only complete performance available of nine Fantasies of III Parts of 1621, wonderfully crafted pieces... The Concordia violists perform them superbly, responsive to each other and matching expressively every nuance of the melodic pattern and emotion’

BBC Music Magazine

For an introduction to the series and Gibbons's music read Mark Levy's interview with Gramophone magazine.

TV star appears with Concordia

Actress Penelope Keith (better known to most of us from her hit TV series ‘The Good Life’ and ‘To the Manor Born’) plays the ageing Queen Elizabeth I in an exciting new show developed by Concordia and writer Susannah Waters in collaboration with the Covent Garden Festival.  Further performances are planned for 2002 and 2003, including a gala performance at Middle Temple Hall in London presented in association with Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to mark the 400th anniversary of Elizabeth I's death.

Concordia and the National Gallery

You can hear music recorded by Concordia on the exhibition video for the current show by the 17th-century Dutch painter Aelbert Cuyp, perhaps most famous for his widely-reproduced pictures of cows in unmistakeably Dutch landscapes!  Later this year Concordia will also record A Venetian Entertainment, a large-scale programme of Italian 16th-century music to tie in with a forthcoming major exhibition at the National of paintings by the great Venetian painter Titian.

Other recent reviews

‘Thursday's programme brought toghether Concordia – a ravishing Jacobean consort – with the soprano Emma Kirkby. These days Kirkby’s timbre may have lost a little of its laser-like clarity; indeed, her low notes have acquired quite a smoky sensuality. But her expressive powers have been, if anything, enhanced by the passing years. Countless phrases were brought to life by some delightful nuance or ornament. A lot of this music is gripping because it is so strange. Just as Jacobean tragedy coarsened the Elizabethan model into gory melodrama, so the era’s composers delighted in twisting the lines of Renaissance counterpoint into jagged and dissonant knots. But there is a fragility, too, about their fantasies and pavans. Anguished chromatic passages will intrude into some serene saraband, or a weird cadence will derail the music on the "wrong" chord, or a viol will whirl off into what sounds like the Baroque equivalent of the mad scene from Lucia di Lammermoor’

The Times

‘Concordia's performance was superlative... balanced and expressive, wonderfully directed by Mark Levy’

Ritmo (Spain)

‘Brilliant, fluid playing and magical fingerwork’

BBC Music Magazine

‘A sweeping and unhurried contrapuntal discourse unfolds with a high emotional density... This is a superb recital of Elizabethan music, and Concordia has to be taken into account among the best available references for viol consort’

Scherzo (Spain)

‘One of the most fascinating concerts I've experienced in ages’

Independent on Sunday

‘Excellent, by turns delicate and infectiously vivacious’

Early Music

‘English music of the 17th Century completely cast aside its antiquity and sounded very contemporary, quite forcefully immediate... Concordia’s playing is distinguished not only by its virtuosity, but in the fine balance of the group, their spirited and scrupulously stylish playing, and a most beautiful round ensemble sound’

Volksstimme Magdeburg (Germany)

‘It is very rare to hear the characteristics of this music contrasted with such intensity and emotion’ «««««

Diapason (France)

‘The viols sounded particularly beautiful, in an almost heavenly harmony’

Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland)

Concert news in brief

Appearances in spring 2002 include a tour on the Dutch Early Music Network, two visits to Germany, recitals in Monmouth, Bolsover and for the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, and broadasts on BBC Television and Radio.  Plans for the 2002-3 season include our first visits to France, the USA, Japan and Australia, a run of performances at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, and concerts for the Lichfield and Three Choirs Festivals amongst others.