Rating: 5/5
Review:
Fabulous
I love this disc. I
really didn’t know whether I would, because mixtures of ancient and
contemporary music often don’t work for me and the description and
notes are rather pretentious, but the recording itself turns out to
be fabulous.
Bruno Helstroffer is
a very fine theorbo player. I love the sound of the theorbo, and he
brings its wonderful resonances out beautifully. There is virtuosity
in abundance here, but also a deep sense of the music, so he knows
exactly when to cut loose and when to show restraint, and he
understands the importance of “the space between the notes,” to
which his background in playing blues and rock guitar must contribute
considerably.
The music itself is
excellent. Composers like Piccinini and Kapsberger are well known to
lutenists and theorbo players and these pieces show why their
reputations survive so well. Helstroffer’s own works are also
excellent; I love his slightly wacky reworking of the minuet from
Bach’s First Cello Suite (“Tea With Bach”), for example, and
other originals show a wonderful blend of the early Baroque with
often improvisatory-sounding styles which reminded me of guitarists
like John Fahey, Leo Kottke, Michel Chapman and others. To cap it
all, the disc concludes with the extraordinary and wonderful Vos
Luths in which the instrument sounds almost like a sitar (and is
probably the only recorded example of bottleneck slide on the
theorbo).
I found Calling The
Muse disc a delight from start to finish (with the sole exception of
Dans la Chambre de mon Théorbe, a poem read in rather over-emphatic
French above a Kapsberger piece). It’s enjoyable, interesting
music, beautifully played and superbly recorded. Very warmly
recommended.
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