Friday concert: Horses Brawl, Mumford Theatre, ARU
Friday, February 13th, 2009 05:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranth"Part Early -- part folk -- part trained precision -- part wild abandon" claims their web site, and ... yeah. Horses Brawl are Laura Cannell (recorders [occasionally two at once], fiddle and crumhorn, though we didn't see the latter) and Adrian Lever (guitar, occasionally Prepared).
They performed 8 tracks, each of which mixed (mashed?) at least two medieval / Renaissance / folk sources, often from wildly different pieces. I especially liked 'Merula', which takes the bassline from Canzonetta Spirituale sopra alla nanna (a Virgin Mary lullaby, early C17), a couple of violin parts from a Telemann recorder concerto, and elements from a traditional Bolivian melody. 'In Aeternum' combined Biber, Susato and Ludwig Senfl, music director to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (it says here).
I was fascinated by the different sounds they evoked: at one point Adrian Lever was using an Oyster card as a plectrum, and later he wove it through the strings to produce a distinctive muted ringing sound. Laura Cannell 'prepared' her violin for 'Loyaute' with a wooden clothespeg just above the bridge. There were times when the guitar sounded like a piano: others when it was muted or altered by sponges, stickers; guitar also used as percussion.
The concert was much more about the music -- the jumbling and juxtaposition of sources, and the technique of producing odd and interesting sounds (sometimes to emulate a different instrument, sometimes just 'cause) -- than it was about showmanship. I didn't mind that, but I think what I did miss was a sense of the musicians having fun -- there were moments of complicity and enjoyment but not as much Wild Abandon as expected!
There are a couple of videos on their website that'll give an idea of the sound, and they are apparently also on MySpace.
They performed 8 tracks, each of which mixed (mashed?) at least two medieval / Renaissance / folk sources, often from wildly different pieces. I especially liked 'Merula', which takes the bassline from Canzonetta Spirituale sopra alla nanna (a Virgin Mary lullaby, early C17), a couple of violin parts from a Telemann recorder concerto, and elements from a traditional Bolivian melody. 'In Aeternum' combined Biber, Susato and Ludwig Senfl, music director to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (it says here).
I was fascinated by the different sounds they evoked: at one point Adrian Lever was using an Oyster card as a plectrum, and later he wove it through the strings to produce a distinctive muted ringing sound. Laura Cannell 'prepared' her violin for 'Loyaute' with a wooden clothespeg just above the bridge. There were times when the guitar sounded like a piano: others when it was muted or altered by sponges, stickers; guitar also used as percussion.
The concert was much more about the music -- the jumbling and juxtaposition of sources, and the technique of producing odd and interesting sounds (sometimes to emulate a different instrument, sometimes just 'cause) -- than it was about showmanship. I didn't mind that, but I think what I did miss was a sense of the musicians having fun -- there were moments of complicity and enjoyment but not as much Wild Abandon as expected!
There are a couple of videos on their website that'll give an idea of the sound, and they are apparently also on MySpace.
