Lockerbie Memorial Concert

We Say...

Review by John Schaefer

The Lockerbie Memorial Concert brought together two of England’s foremost early music groups — the string ensemble called Fretwork and the vocal quartet known as the Hilliard Ensemble. Both have also become major players on the new music scene in Europe, working with composers like Michael Nyman, Arvo Pärt and — on this album — the Englishman Gavin Bryars. The program is an intriguing blend of early music and Bryars’ own compositions, but the high point of the album must be Bryars’ “Cadman Requiem,” a piece written to commemorate the death of one of Bryars’ friends in the Lockerbie air disaster. This moving but understated work has now been arranged for the viols (essentially bowed members of the lute family, for all that they look like cellos) and voices, and the performances are completely authoritative by both Fretwork and the Hilliards, who sang in the original version. This music is a good example of Bryars’ peculiarly British take on American Minimalism: it’s in no hurry, and the harmonic language is both restrained and accessible. There is also a sense of anachronism at play, as gestures that would’ve seemed natural 300 or 400 years ago somehow fit into this relatively recent work.

That timeless quality is certainly behind the other choices made for this memorial concert. “In Nomine (after Purcell)” may not be among Bryars’ most important works, but it is a lovely companion to Purcell’s original. Other highlights would have to be the Hilliard performance of Busnois’s stunning “In Hydraulis,” a work they have practically owned for years and which they have used to almost single-handedly revive the name of this 15th-century Frenchman; and a new early music-style arrangement of Bryars’ piece “Incipit Vita Nova,” which moves at Bryars’ preferred clip — slow — but is a radiant work nonetheless for countertenor and strings.