Various venues, York
William Byrd's vast output contains a surprisingly small amount of Anglican church music ? the recusant Catholic was more committed to producing Latin masses than services in English. Yet Byrd's Great Service is so ambitious it is hard to be sure which cathedral would have the resources to perform it; though sources suggest it was sung at York Minster in 1618. Paul McCreesh is a master at staging reconstructions of liturgical events, and his performance of the Great Service with the Gabrieli Consort transported the minster congregation four centuries back in time. The revelation was how contemporary Byrd's writing sounded. The tendrils of pure tone produced by 26 voices coiling and uncoiling in counterpart must have pushed the Protestant reformers' demand for simplicity to the limit.
An interpolation that would not have been permitted 400 years ago was a pair of spectacular, though entirely secular sonnets commissioned for the occasion from Jonathan Dove. Dove's setting of sonnets by Samuel Daniel and Shakespeare slipped seamlessly into the service, with sinuous, antiphonal lines sometimes colliding into a sensuous throb. The Scottish dancing master, singer and musical apothecary James Oswald is an overlooked figure, but a selection of his Aires dedicated to the healing properties of plants was a highlight of an off-beat recital of 18th-century violin sonatas by Lucy Russell. The soothing gigue of the Narcissus was quite the tonic for soothing stiff joints, while the Aire to the Sneez-wort contained some violent musical catarrh. Yet the highlight was a strikingly minimalist sonata by Michael Christian Festing, whose lachrymose Largo, only 12 measures in length, was an innovative, baroque version of 12-bar blues.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jul/12/york-early-music-festival-review
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