The closing concert of Kilkenny Arts Week's 25th anniversary programme, by a long shot the best programme of recent years, was given at St Canice's Cathedral on Sunday by the distinguished British pairing of the viol consort Fretwork with the soprano Catherine Bott. Their programme of 17th century English music opened with a real gem, This merry pleasant spring, by the little-known Richard Nicholson. As a calling-card, this piece works like magic, allowing Bott to shine with clear-voiced purity of tone, immaculate intonation and miraculously precise filigree, and the viol players to evidence the straightness and cleanness of their delivery.
As a concert-opener of unexpected delight, it's a hard number to follow, and, certainly, in many ways, a hard one to build up from. In spite of the consistency of both playing and singing, it was not until the final item of the first half, William Byrd's My mistress had a little dog, that a similar frisson would be generated. Perhaps my taste is for a more interventionist approach in dealing with the instrumental frictions and stresses of this kind of music, but Fretwork's beautifully finished playing just didn't seem to hint lustily enough at the passing dissonances which make much of this often melancholy music so interesting. In a concert where so much was realised with such obvious musical virtue, it may seem excessively demanding to make this point, but, then, the tensions of the counterpoint were better explored in the more immediately inviting fantasias by Gibbons and Purcell in the second half, where Bott also reached one of her frequent peaks in Byrd's dark-hued O that most rare breast.
