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Doris Williams, soprano & lute / Sunday, February 24, 2013
Beth Zucchino

Doris Williams, Mike Bell, Claudia Gantivar (B. Zucchino Photo)

LATE WINTER TURNS TO SPRING IN CREATIVE ARTS SERIES CONCERT

by Michael J. Mello
Sunday, February 24, 2013

A concert of Renaissance and Celtic songs for voice, lute and recorder was presented by soprano and lutenist Doris Williams with the assistance of recorder virtuoso Claudia Liliana Gantivar and mandolinist Mike Bell. The Feb. 24 event in Santa Rosa’s Resurrection Parish Church was part of the Creative Arts Series.

The music began with a delightful performance of Claudin de Sermisy’s “Tant que vivray” (“As long as I shall live”), a chanson which alternated between sections in a stately and sober pavane rhythm reflecting the singer’s languishing in love, and more sprightly sections celebrating love possessed. The delicacy of Ms. William’s lute playing as she accompanied herself, as well as the pure intonation and tasteful ornamentation of her singing, and the skillful and well-tuned divisions (variations) of Ms. Gantivar’s playing on soprano recorder were qualities lavished on this and all the songs presented this afternoon.

In the second work, Paul Hofhaimer’s “Herliebstes bild” (“Beloved sight”), Ms. Williams commenced with a beautiful straight tone which then opened up into a more full, warm timbre for the almost hymnic melody, and was accompanied by Ms. Gantivar’s lively divisions on the tenor recorder. The two women brought passion and intensity to one of the “top 10” of the Renaissance, “Doulce Memoire” (“Sweet Memory”), and while the text concludes that “Good is finished, misfortune has beat us,” it was the good fortune of the audience to hear this fine performance.

Particularly touching was the delicacy of ensemble of the voice, recorder and lute in the closing envoi of this musical and poetic meditation on the transitory nature of happiness and pleasure. In the charming “O Vilanela” by Dutch composer Hubert Waelrant, Williams playfully affected different vocal timbres for the different speakers of the lines of the song.

Perhaps the most affecting song of the afternoon was “Amarylli mia bella.” In the opening solo for just recorder, Ms. Gantivar demonstrated the ability of her instrument to mourn and lament. A second section offered more lively and virtuosic divisions on the melody, and Ms. Williams and Ms. Gantivar conspired at the end in an effective, expressive return to the mournful feeling of the opening. Particularly expressive were Ms. Williams’ Monteverdi (“goat”) trills in the closing cadences. “Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ” (“Praised are you, Jesus Christ”) by the Praetorius was almost secular and madrigalesque in its humanistic joy in the birth of Jesus. The playful canonic interchanges between the voice and recorder were delightful. In the instrumental medley “Denmark’s Galliard/ Fairie Round” by Elizabethan composers Dowland and Holborne, Ms. Gantivar displayed great virtuosity on the soprano recorder, accompanied skillfully by Ms. Williams on the lute. Ms. Williams even added a delightful envoi of Renaissance scat-singing in the final measures.

In the Renaissance lute songs of Dowland and Thomas Morley could be performed by any number of combinations of voices and/or instruments. Dowland’s “Awake, Sweet Love” elicited in general a more full-bodied vocal tone from Williams with one of the polyphonic counter-melodies played with great sensitivity on the alto recorder by Ms. Gantivar. The singer moved easily and fluently through the more extended vocal range of the final lute song, Morley’s “With my love,” accompanied at the end with virtuosic divisions on the tune by Ms. Gantivar.

After intermission the two artists, now with a tin whistle added to the array of winds and with Mr. Bell on mandolin, presented a number of Celtic songs from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. “Blackbird and Thrushes” (“If all the young ladies were …”) was a lively beginning, followed by the moody “Dark Island,” a song originally written for a BBC series on the Hebrides Islands. The three artists captured the ethereal quality of the island “bathed in light” with a beautiful, delicate closing of tremolos on the mandolin. In the famous “Skye Boat Song,” Ms. Williams sang of carrying the child Bonnie Prince Charlie over the sea to Skye. Her warm, full-bodied singing in this song made me wish to hear more of that sound.

In perhaps most famous Welsh song of all, “The Ash Grove,” Ms. Gantivar played divisions on the melody with great facility in the interlude for recorder solo. “South Wind” elicited crystalline timbres from the lute, mandolin and recorder – musical Irish crystal! Yet another Welsh song, “Adar man y mynydd,” sensitively sung in Welsh, concerned transitions, dying and death: “What are these birds warbling so sweetly? … I fear that in the fall, I will be in the soil.” Ms. Williams borrowed the beautifully expressive, angular melody of a song by Doug Young to set the words of a poem by her own mother, “Like the nun who sings to none.”

The delightful afternoon of music ended with a lively performance of the very popular Irish song, “Canticle of the Turning - My heart does sing.” The three musicians left us singing in our hearts as well.