Fretwork

GRAND PRIX DU DISQUE 1997

…the performances are wonderfully responsive…consort playing of the highest quality. (Nicholas Kenyon, BBC Radio 3)

“My final winner took me almost unawares. Fretwork recorded the Lachrimae in two goes and if Savall has the edge in the seven pavans, in the second half Fretwork is supreme. The most moving of the later pavans is ‘Semper Dowland, semper dolens’ (Ever Dowland, ever grieving), which imitates the In Nomine. I knew I’d found my winner when I heard Fretwork’s measured rendition of its final section, hushed and inward, huskier and slower than Savall’s, as if in resigned acceptance of the melancholy that comes over us when we realise, with Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice, that ‘Harmony is in immortal souls, but whilst this muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it’

Nick Morgan

BBC Music Magazine, September 2003