The Excellency of Hand: English Viola da Gamba Duos
$32.00
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SIMPSON / JENKINS / IVES
The Excellency of Hand: English Viola da Gamba Duos
Robert Smith (viola da gamba) & Paolo Pandolfo (viola da gamba)
[ Resonus Classics / CD ]
Release Date: Friday 31 March 2017
This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.
Following on from his critically acclaimed recording of solo English viola da gamba works (Tickle the Minikin), founder member of Fantasticus, Robert Smith, returns with this album of English works for viola da gamba duo. Smith is joined in this collaboration by the prolific and celebrated gambist Paolo Pandolfo.
Featuring a selection of seventeenth-century repertoire from Christopher Simpson, John Jenkins & Simon Ives, this album is packed with divisions for duo, which are often intensely virtuosic. Also featured are a selection of preludes from Christopher Simpson's The Division Viol and an additional Prelude in A minor by gambist Robert Smith.
"Smith and Pandolfo enjoy a terrific rapport, sharing an acute sensitivity to balance, ensemble, phrasing and nuance. Hearing them is like listening to an exquisitely choreographed pas de deux, one moment graceful and balletic, the next robust and athletic. Their supple ornamentation, informed by evidence in primary sources, is also most effective" BBC Music Five Stars
The gambists aren't afraid to produce robust sonorities in the most extroverted passages, or to whisper to one another when the mood turns austere. In many of the divisions, they share and interweave phrases with a seamless dexterity that rivets the attention. The end result, with a nod to Simpson, is "delight" that can only elicit an active listener's bountiful "admiration."' Early Music America
