Dowland: A Fantasie

“The prospect of a Nigel North set is something to drool over, and this first installment doesn't disappoint. Pre-eminently the lutenist's lutenist, North is steeped in the music - and technically beyond reproach. Can anyone slip the colourist gears as smoothly? Every opening chord makes you sit up and pay attention; lazy listening is never an option.” BBC Music Magazine *****

“A collector’s item” The Times

“…Nigel North… has organised his programme into alternative groups of dancelike pieces, often bearing the dedicatee's name, and free-form works of an often profound nature, including the seven superb Fantasies. The resultant light and shade, the changing moods and the robustness of much of the writing is perfectly mirrored in North's own deployment of tone, ornamentation and shifting emphases. This is mature playing of real depth.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2006

“Supported with exceptional clarity by Jakob Lindberg, Kirkby conveys both intellectual appreciation and a deep emotional connection with the words in this recital...[her] 'Bess of Bedlam' is more sympathetic than most, and her 'Music for a While' is more enigmatic. The voice may be less beautiful than it was, but her singing is more beautiful than ever.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2011 ****

“Few singers are quite a compelling with only a lute for company: Kirkby's phrasing has impeccable light and shade, and her authoritative articulation of melancholic sentiments is simply first-class...her gripping interpretation [of In darkness let me dwell] is devoid of complacence; moreover, her intonation and technique in florid music has lost none of its sparkle and precision.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2011

“Kirkby embellishes with taste and discretion...Both [she] and Lindberg are especially good here in the last Dowland item, 'In darkness let me dwell'...the tempo well judged, the lute part a translucent garment draped over Kirkby's highly expressive delivery.” International Record Review, May 2011

“The collection might have sounded like a bit of a hotchpotch were it not for the fact that Dowland's celebrated Lachrimae pavans are woven through the sequence, giving the whole a sense of unity and shape. All in all, it makes a nostalgic and inspiring testimony to Dowland's versatility.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2007 ****

“Hopkinson Smith's latest collection, 'A Dream', invites the listener '...to penetrate the world of the inner senses that is the domain of the lute'.
An elegantly constructed programme (built around groups of Hilliard-like portraits and melancholy flights of fancy) tropes sonnet-like at the wonderful Farwell, a magical, troubling fantasy that treats its chromatically rising theme contrapuntally while somehow tying all the preceding emotional strands in the programme together. This propels the listener lachrymoneously (sic – Smith's word) into an even darker dwelling-place than was expected. In fact, this is the genius of the disc, and what makes it a genuinely moving experience.
Smith's playing, too, is elegant rather than overtly virtuosic, although he has technique to burn, as anyone who's familiar with his numerous recordings will tell you. He prefers a more suggestive, diffuse approach to Dowland's music (compared with, say, Paul O'Dette). As a result, the numerous diminutions serve to intensify the character of each piece in a profound and subtle way.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010