Shakespeare in Music
Written by Andrew Johnstone
31.10.08 IBO Chamber Soloists, Ruiten/ Huggett
St Ann's Church, Dublin
For this colourful and fascinating exploration of pre-18th-century Shakespearean music, the Irish Baroque Orchestra's Chamber Soloists, under their artistic director, Monica Huggett, were joined by the distinguished Dutch soprano, Lenneke Ruiten.
Items from the Bard's own lifetime included the anonymous Willow Song he appropriated for Othello, two apposite lute solos (played by Richard Sweeney), and settings of Where the Bee Sucks and Full Fathom Five by a younger contemporary, lutenist Robert Johnson. The bulk of the programme, however, drew on music composed for two revivals of The Tempest in 1667 and 1674, and on Purcell's score for The Fairy Queen, a free adapation of A Midsummer Night's Dream that was a landmark of decadence in Restoration theatre. The songs by Johnson, as well as those by the later composers, Pelham Humphrey and John Bannister, are straightforward and freshly tuneful settings. The text is still positively the richest ingredient.
So intensely complex was her expression that Ruiten, who is a noted interpreter of romantic lieder, seemed to sing these plain ditties for more than their musical worth. It was rather with the invigorating histrionics of Pietro Reggio's Arise, ye subterranean winds and the more cogent musical rhetoric of Purcell that her versatile artistry was best revealed.
Purcell's skeletal accompaniments were fleshed out with style and discretion by Malcolm Proud at the harpsichord, although where I was sitting his keyboard contributions to the full instrumental items might have been less prominent, and the bass line more so. Perhaps significantly, then, the most coherent string textures occurred without continuo, in a beautifully muted See, even Night herself is here, from The Fairy Queen.
True to form, Huggett inspired playing that brimmed with enjoyment. There was particular relish to a zany Curtain Tune, by Matthew Locke, and his engagingly unpredictable dances came off with verve.
ANDREW JOHNSTONE
