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This Pick of the Week features the 2019 performance of Fretwork with Iestyn Davies. These stars of the early music world dazzle in a striking range of repertoire spanning four centuries. You'll hear English masters old and new: pieces by Byrd, Purcell, and Jenkins from the heyday of the viol to songs by Michael Nyman. Arias from Handel's Giulio Cesare and a vocal "concerto" by Johann Christoph Bach offer a spotlight for a singer of "rapturous virtuosity and uncanny beauty" (The Independent). Partnering with "the finest viol consort on the planet" (Evening Standard, London), Davies conjures breathtaking colors and timbres: a palette perfect for a moment in the sunlit stillness of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Silent Noon.
Asako Morikawa, Joanna Levine, Sam Stadlen, Emily Ashton and Richard Boothby, viols
Iestyn Davies, counter-tenor
BYRD
My mind to me
Fantasia “Two parts in one”
Ye Sacred Muses
Browning
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
The Sky Above
Silent Noon
GIBBONS
Fantasia in Four Parts
J.C. BACH
Lamento
GESUALDO
Beltà poi che t’assenti
Dolcissima mia vita
Sparge la notte
LAWES
Consort Set in A minor
Fantazy, Fantazy, Aire
NYMAN
If
Why
JENKINS
Fantasia in Five Parts
HANDEL
Già l’ebro mio ciglio
Passacaille
Piangerò
Richard Boothby, Fretwork co-founder and viol player, talks to the Library's Anne McLean about the viol, Fretwork's history and its work with contemporary music. Boothby demonstrates one of the Library's viols, the Pieter Rombouts viol from 1708.
