Fretwork and Helen Charlston
Humbie Church, 12/9/24
Fretwork, and Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano)
I’ve been listening to Fretwork since 1989, when I bought their CD, ‘Night’s Black Bird’, featuring the ‘Lacrimae’ by John Dowland. It’s one of my go-to recordings, for its warm sonority and deeply beautiful playing, and it was a rare treat on Thursday to hear them play a concert in the delightful Humbie Church, a little riverside sanctuary deep in the forests and hills of East Lothian. The Lammermuir Festival has an uncanny knack of finding concert venues in the most unlikely places, and we really had to trust the Sat-Nav for this one!
On a glorious, sunny autumnal day, a packed house heard a beautiful recital of English music from the 17th Century. Beginning the 400th anniversary celebrations of the death of Orlando Gibbons a year early, the viol consort began with a Pavan and Galliard by that most exquisite composer, whose most famous work is the sad and haunting madrigal, ‘The Silver Swan’. It’s a piece I have been singing since I was at school and have sung three of its four parts over a period of 60 years! The Pavan and Galliard was a perfect way to start, introducing us to the six part writing for viol consort which was his hallmark. It starts conservatively as a homage to the great William Byrd, his older contemporary, but develops in a way Byrd could not imagine, and, as the excellent and witty programme notes by Richard Boothby say, “results in a kind of jazzy suppressed anarchy!” Richard Boothby was one of the founders of Fretwork in 1985, and his amusing chat at the beginning of the concert put everyone in a relaxed frame of mind. The consort plays in a semi-circle, and with the full complement, consists of two treble viols (Emilia Benjamin and Jonathan Rees), two tenor viols (Emily Ashton and Joanna Levine) and two bass viols (Sam Stadlen and Richard Boothby).
The second piece on the programme was a lament in three parts, also by Gibbons, and probably written to mourn Prince Henry Stuart, whose death in 1612, aged only 18, came as a great shock to the court of James VI and I. This lament was sung by the young mezzo-soprano, Helen Charlston, and introduced me to a superb new vocal star. Beginning as a chorister at St Albans Abbey, and studying music at Trinity College, Cambridge, Ms Charlston has been taking the world of early music by storm. Winner of the London Handel Singing Competition in 2018, and the Ferrier Loveday Song Prize in the 2021 Kathleen Ferrier Awards (incidentally 40 years after I won the Decca Kathleen Ferrier Award!), she has been a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist (2021-23) and a member of Les Arts Florissants Young Artists’ Programme. It is a unique voice, very clear and pure, with an impressive lower range and a smooth transition to the higher notes. There is little vibrato in the sound, but she possesses an ability to paint words with colours and nuances that makes vibrato unnecessary, and she quickly assessed the quality of the acoustic in Humbie Church, enabling her to use dynamic variation to extremely good effect. Her diction was impeccable (not always a feature of female voices!) and her tall figure dominated the little space in front of the consort, singing with a poise and stillness rare in one so early in a career. It didn’t surprise me to learn that Ms Charlston is an accomplished Lieder singer, and I look forward to hearing her sing that repertoire in the future.
Fretwork moved on to perform some pieces by William Lawes (1602-45), a composer of whom I was largely unaware, but who featured prominently in this concert. He was mainly in the employ of Prince Charles, the younger brother of Prince Henry, whose early demise promoted his brother to heir to the throne, becaming the ill-fated King Charles I. William Lawes was a friend as well as employee of Charles, and it seems probable that they played viol consort music together. After three short and delightful songs by Lawes, performed by Ms Charlston and Mr Boothby, Fretwork ended the first half by playing Lawes Consort Set in F Major, a marvellously wacky piece challenging the bounds of consort playing both harmonically and rhythmically.
The audience spilled out into the sunny churchyard to take the air and discuss what we had heard, but soon returned for another Consort Set, this time in C Major, again majestically played.
Next we heard ‘Wilt thou forgive that sin’, a setting of John Donne by Pelham Humfrey, another mid-17th century composer who, like all the composers in this concert, died young. Helen Charlston sang with great feeling, catching all the nuances of Donne’s words in this prayer for forgiveness of sins, in which the poet finally realises that not believing that God will forgive is the greatest sin!
Apart from one more Lawes Consort Set, the rest of the concert was given over to three magnificent songs by Henry Purcell: Music for a While, O Solitude and the Evening Hymn. In these superb settings, the full tapestry of Ms Charlston’s interpretative skills were revealed, as she sang to the accompaniment of Richard Boothby’s bass viol. In the mid-90s, I was fortunate enough to be engaged for a couple of major tours and Deutsche Grammophon recordings of Purcell’s music for King Arthur, Dioclesian and Timon of Athens, and that period remains one of the high points in my career. Consequently, I love any concerts that feature Purcell’s music, and to hear these three fine songs performed so expertly by Helen Charlston was a true pleasure. She showed what a range she has, both of tessitura and also of interpretation, and the audience at Humbie was hugely appreciative.
Fretwork and Ms Charlston gave us a lovely encore of Benjamin Britten’s setting of the folk song, ‘The River is Wide’, which I remember Peter Pears singing at Snape in the late 70s, and their performance was as moving as his. A superb concert.
