Fairest Isle: a Feast of English Song
Unitarian Universalist Church
25 Main St.
Peterborough, NH 03458
Ilana Davidson, soprano
This concert brings England’s rich post-Shakespearean musical ferment to life in Peterborough’s elegant Unitarian church. Soprano Ilana Davidson joins Alex Bonus, virginal; James Wilson, baroque cello; and Tricia van Oers, recorder, in a program exploring the golden age of English song. The program features music by Henry Purcell and John Dowland, along with instrumental interludes by John Playford, Davis Mell, Godfry Finger, Dominico Gabrieli, and Orlando Gibbons, played on period instruments.
The quartet of musicians is studded with talent. Davidson, a frequent orchestral soloist as well as contemporary music ace, combines crystalline purity with agility and the power to summon deep pathos in her singing. Bonus is a scholar-musician newly appointed to Bard College. His knowledgeable and inventive hand has sculpted the evening’s program into a witty, moving entertainment. Wilson has a wide-ranging career that includes everything from baroque cello, to membership in the Shanghai Quartet, and van Oers was trained at the source in the Netherlands, epicenter of period recorder playing.
Selections from Purcell’s “Fairy Queene” and “King Arthur” along with many of his, and Dowland’s, most beloved arias will be interspersed with ditties played on the English virginal, recorder, and baroque cello. Thematically, the evening journeys from love found to love lost, with all the joy and tragedy that implies, and includes texts from the great English poets of the day- Shakespeare not the least among them.
Program
[half]Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
from the Fairy Queen:
“Come all ye Songsters”
“If Love’s a sweet passion”
“Hark The Echoing Air”
from King Arthur:
“Fairest Isle”
“Hither This Way”
“Here the deities approve”
“Sweeter Than Roses”
“Music For a While”
“If Music Be the Food of Love”
“She loves and she confesses too”
John Dowland (1563-1626)
“Me me and none but me”
“Come Away, come sweet love”
[/half]
For instrumental ensemble (recorder, cello, and virginal):
John Playford (1623-1687)
– Selected Dances, including
“Maid in the Mill,”
“Emperor of the Moon,”
“London’s Loyalty,”
“Love for Love”
Davis Mell (1604-1622)
– John come kiss me now (variations)
Henry Purcell
– Instrumental selections from Fairy Queen and King Arthur
Godfry Finger (1660-1730)
– Selected variations on a ground basses
For solo cello:
Dominico Gabrieli (1651-1690)
– Selected Ricercares
For solo virginal:
Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)
– Selected Fancies
