Byrd: Fortune my Foe

“Harry our King”, the new CD of the well-known German ensemble Capella de la Torre, is a fairytale-like interpretation of music from the court of King Henry VIII Tudor of England.

King Henry was a well-educated and creative art lover, who played and composed music himself and gathered at his court artists and scholars from all over Europe. On this vibrant new recording songs and dances of Henry VIII and his contemporaries are made into a musical caleidoscope of courtial life with all its aspects of love, leisure and religiousness. Famous tenor Charles Daniels with his unique Old English pronounciation makes this music very much alive!

The accomplishments of the virginalists, that school of English keyboard composers who flourished in the late Tudor and early Stuart eras, are documented in even the most succinct music history books. This recording proposes an overview of non-liturgical English keyboard music from about 1525 to 1650, written for an instrument then called the virginals. Because of its slower mechanism and rustic timbre, the "virginals" is used here for playing the earlier repertoire and for variations on folk tunes, whereas the harpsichord is reserved for the more extended virtuoso pieces. Harpsichordist and scholar Rachelle Taylor has given concerts and lectures in Canada, Europe, the United States, and Taiwan, and has been featured in broadcast concerts on the French and English services of the CBC.

The unrivalled master of the consort song and virtually the founding father of keyboard music, William Byrd -no less than John Dowland - is well served in these arrangements with viola da gamba duo and with lute. The purely instrumental pieces beautifully set off the telling voice of star countertenor Daniel Taylor.