R E V I E W S

DOWLAND Can shee excuse. O sweet woods. It was a time. I saw my lady weepe. Flow my teares. Sorrow stay. Dye not before thy day. Mourne, mourne, day is with darknesse. Fine knacks for ladies. Farewell too faire. Time stands still. Behold a wonder here. Daphne was not so chaste. Me me and none but me. When Phoebus first did Daphne love. Say love if ever thou didst find. His golden locks. Time’s eldest sonne. Farre from triumphing Court • Emma Kirkby (sop); Anthony Rooley (lt) • BIS 1475 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 65:22 &)

For the neophyte, this is an ideal introduction to the songs of John Dowland, and it should greatly please those who have already been beguiled by the composer. The songs here are grouped by patron, suggesting that Dowland wrote rather differently for each. Anthony Rooley, in his liner notes, asserts that the items for the Earl of Essex “are a consummation of the egoism that was [the earl’s] downfall”; this seems a bit much to make of “Can shee excuse,” “O sweet woods,” and “It was a time.” Yet there’s no denying that Dowland’s songs for Lucy, Countess of Bedford, are among the most exquisite selections from a catalog full of haunting works. Writes Rooley, “Her namesake, St. Lucy, had her eyes gouged out by some heathen in the second century A.D.—and young Lucy had the wit and effrontery to use this as an artistic ‘persona,’ encouraging songs about eyes, tears, darkness. Hers was an Hermetic symbolism, arcane and for the cognoscenti, but powerful in its intensity, and a true source of inspiration for John Dowland.” This set includes the justly famous, famously dolorous “Flow my teares,” which is a measure of the quality and sensitivity of Dowland’s settings for Lucy.

Emma Kirkby has been singing this sort of music for a good long time now. Her voice remains youthful, but it’s a bit more weighty, and she’s allowing more variety of color than in the early days; tasteful vibrato is also a more common ornament than before. Kirkby is not as animated in this kind of material as, say, Custer LaRue, but she is English, after all, and within the parameters of British taste, she is sensitive to the text. Rooley is a reliable, supportive, perhaps deferential accompanist. He’s always been best as a partner rather than as a soloist, so he’s definitely in his element here.

BIS, as always in small-scale music, provides attractive surround-sound sonics; the listener’s perspective is from halfway back a small but resonant hall, perhaps just a bit too distant to display the lute to its best advantage, but certainly not drowning it in reverberation.

FANFARE: James Reel