About FretworkReviews of Fretwork...I love this group; I love their timbre, I love the way the individual styles of the viol players tussle against and inform each other, I love the tension of their approach and the sound they create. "Fifteen years on, Fretwork remain the world's leading viol consort, and if this disc for new label Harmonia Mundi is anything to go by, we're in for many years of electrifying playing. Outstanding. One came to appreciate every minutely observed rise and fall of tension, every detail of immaculately groomed phrasing, as this first-rate ensemble demonstrated its art in Purcell Fantasias and In Nomines and four Lawes Consort Setts, ending with the wonderful one for six viols in C minor . . . and it was the majestic cumulative layering of polyphonic lines in the final work that offered Lawes and Fretwork at their most masterly. It is hard to imagine consort playing of greater refinement or subtlety than this. The subtle nuances of sonority so ably demonstrated by Fretwork in the rest of their programme were put to good use by Nyman in a work abundantly fertile in invention and varied in expressive range. . . There were minimalist pre-echoes in at least two of the viol consort pieces, by Picforth and Robert Parsons, in which wave after wave of sound rippled out from a sequentially motivated central source, an effect exquisitely realised by Fretwork. A fascinating, beautifully played programme . . . Fretwork addressed all this music with an easy-going virtuosity. In variation sets, the principal lines moved smoothly and easily from one instrument to the next, and in chordal music, the players produced a well-tuned, fully balanced sound with a delightfully tangy character. A number of composers have been inspired by the revival of early music, among them George Benjamin, whose interest was aroused by the viol consort Fretwork. And no wonder, for their playing is a revelation . . . Using modern techniques of pizzicato, harmonics and vibrato, Benjamin creates an alluring sound world in a work that is as taut in structure and richly fantastic in invention as the Elizabethan consort pieces.
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