VoxCarnyx

Perth Concert Hall

Viola de gamba virtuoso Liam Byrne is the most recent recipient of the valuable Glenn Gould Bach Fellowship which supports musicians with ambitious plans pertaining to the exploration of Baroque music, and he brought that expertise to the table for this recital which teamed Sean Shibe’s lute with four string players.

Byrne was paired with the Dunedin Consort’s Learning and Participation Manager Lucia Capellaro on the viola de gambas, sitting opposite two Dunedin regulars, Huw Daniel and Rebecca Livermore on baroque violins, with Shibe’s lute in the middle.

It was an interesting, and unusual, line-up, and a fascinating development of a side of the guitarist’s multi-faceted practice that may have its origins in his residency at the East Neuk Festival.

It was there we first heard Shibe explore the early music found in the collections of Fife country houses, scores that revealed how well-travelled the gentry of Scotland had been in the 16^th and 17^th centuries and how the music they collected, especially in France, was performed at home alongside that of their native land.

So it was here, in a programme that pivoted around a Suite in D by Marin Marais, brought to Scotland in a manuscript in the composer’s own hand that now resides in the National Library of Scotland and pre-dates its French publication. That work encapsulated where the researches of Byrne and Shibe overlap, as well as illustrating why their explorations are far from being of mere academic interest but are chiefly about bringing very fine early music back into performance.

This programme was all about clever juxtapositions and segues from one country to another, all within that earlier era. There was music that is much better known than the Marais – notably Jean Baptiste Lully’s Airs and Dances from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, which closed the concert, and John Dowland’s Lachrimae Pavan.

The latter ran straight into a suite by English composer Christopher Simpson and another of those had opened the programme – beautiful works whose requirements had undoubtedly shaped the line-up on stage and which were indicative of the early work Byrne champions. As with the Marais, which reduced the quintet to duo and trio ensembles, this was vintage music soulfully played, in Byrne’s case on an original instrument of the period.

Shibe’s selections from the Panmure, Bowie, MacFarlane and Rowallen manuscripts in the collection of the National Library of Scotland often sounded more recognisable to ears used to Scots traditional music, especially the solos for Huw Daniel to demonstrate his folk fiddle expertise.

Byrne describes himself as a player of very old and very new music  (David Lang, Nico Muhly and Donnacha Dennehy have all composed for him), and that is not so unusual among Early Music players. Shibe’s musical life is less easily compartmentalised, but once again he has found, in the Dunedin Consort, ideal collaborators for his musical excursions.

Keith Bruce

Picture by Stuart Armitt