About this Artist

• Biography

Editorial Reviews

The toccatas of Girolamo Frescobaldi are often presented as the beginning of something, as forerunners of the tradition of quasi-improvisatory keyboard works that culminated in the toccatas of Bach. In this marvelous collection of music for the Baroque harp, Frescobaldi comes at the end, with his toccatas and airs seen as examples of formal control over still wilder materials that could include actual improvisation or immediate references to it. The music here stretches back into the sixteenth century, lying close to the roots of one branch of notated instrumental music in Europe. The harp came to Italy from Spain, via Naples, and the music here is divided between Spanish pieces and their Italian emulators. The Luduvico named in the album's title was a Spanish harpist renowned for his improvisational abilities, and the program begins with a "Fantasia que contrahaze la harpa en la maniera de Luduvico," a fantasy in the manner of Luduvico. Harp playing was dramatic from the start, with sharp contrasts and dissonances, known in Spanish as falsas. One of the most compelling features of harpist Andrew Lawrence-King's performance is that he replicates the ongoing improvisatory component of this repertory, contributing three original improvisations, on pieces by Spanish composer Diego Ortiz, that illuminate the triad of free fantasy, improvisations over dance rhythms, and "divisions" of vocal melodies. These three impulses grew into the entire edifice of non-contrapuntal Baroque keyboard music.

The composer who exploited the quasi-improvisatory harp style to the maximum was the Flemish-Neapolitan Giovanni de Macque, whose "Prima stravaganze" and "Toccata a modo di trompetas," recorded here, race dramatically around the strings of the harp like Liszt on a piano keyboard. There are sudden pauses, long glissandi, tortured chromatic harmonies, sharp contrasts of loud and soft -- all the devices one associates with the Romantic era, not the late Renaissance. Macque transferred some of these qualities to his madrigals, and Lawrence-King in his notes points to the dramatic toccata style as a source for the emerging idea of drama in music. He performs an instrumental version of a Monteverdi sacred madrigal, "Nigra sum," and points out that "toccata style and the improvisatory techniques of continuo playing are very closely linked." The listener will learn that the division between Renaissance and Baroque means little or nothing in this music, and even the listener not out to learn anything at all will be riveted by the sweep and virtuosity of Lawrence-King's playing. Cover blurbs on classical albums are worth not a bit more than the ones in movie ads, but here it is hard to disagree with the critic who advised the browser to acquire this album, "even if it means pawning something you can live without." James Manheim, All Music Guide

Customer Reviews

• Listener Rating: