{"title":"John Dowland","description":"\u003cp\u003e1563–1626. British composer. in the English Renaissance tradition.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDowland is the quintessential case where contemplative and intimate ARE the defining qualities — his lute songs and pavans are bywords for Elizabethan melancholy and introspection. Lachrimae is his masterwork; Flow My Tears was the most famous song of its era.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSignature works:\u003c\/em\u003e Lachrimae or Seven Tears, Flow My Tears, Come Heavy Sleep, In Darkness Let Me Dwell, The Frog Galliard.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"dowland-flow-my-tears-etc-steven-rickards-234454","title":"Dowland: Flow My Tears, Etc \/Steven Rickards, Dorothy Linell","description":"DOWLAND: Flow My Tears and Other Lute Songs","brand":"Naxos","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":44625472422122,"sku":"730099438124","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/209863.jpg?v=1778346551"},{"product_id":"dowland-lachrimae-or-seaven-teares-7318590003152","title":"Dowland: Lachrimae, Or Seaven Teares","description":"Classical Music","brand":"BIS","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":44624113369322,"sku":"7318590003152","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/2262770.jpg?v=1778319759"},{"product_id":"dowland-first-booke-of-songes-covey-crump-189002","title":"Dowland: First Booke Of Songes \/ Covey-crump, Lindberg","description":"Classical Music","brand":"BIS","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":44711234732266,"sku":"7318590004302","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/2262824.jpg?v=1778311974"},{"product_id":"dowland-j-lute-music","title":"Dowland, J.: Lute Music","description":"Classical Music","brand":"Centaur Records","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":44712164720874,"sku":"044747261027","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/2243414.jpg?v=1778295527"},{"product_id":"lute-songs-more","title":"LUTE SONGS \u0026 MORE","description":"Classical Music","brand":"ALTO","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":44908051792106,"sku":"894640001486","price":11.01,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/1516583.jpg?v=1778373975"},{"product_id":"a-peter-warlock-merry-go-down","title":"A Peter Warlock Merry-Go-Down","description":"The original 1971 Merry-Go-Down LP on Unicorn Records was the brainchild of the late Fred Tomlinson, former chairman of the Peter Warlock Society, to showcase Peter Warlock's extraordinary range of musical and literary knowledge and achievements. The Peter Warlock Society and Convivium Records consider the content and performances of the pioneering LP to be of such a high standard as to require re-release, and have facilitated it's reproduction on this delightful CD. Michael Graves, Chairman, Peter Warlock Society","brand":"Convivium Records","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46012480520426,"sku":"700153370820","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/4363274-3236451.jpg?v=1778212442"},{"product_id":"dowland-complete-larchimae-musicall-humors","title":"Dowland: Complete Lachrimae \/ Musicall Humors Viol Consort","description":"\u003cp\u003e‘London, April 1604. With the freshly printed partbooks of his Lachrimae under his arm, John Dowland walks from the printing house to his home in Fetter Lane. He should have been back in Denmark long ago, but for the moment all his thoughts are on the new publication he is carrying, his latest and most ambitious work to date: a complete cycle of instrumental music, twenty-one dances, honourably dedicated to Anne of Denmark, Queen of England.’ For Dowland has just completed one of the greatest masterpieces of Renaissance music. He had left England to enter the service of the Danish court, disappointed at not being appointed court composer to Elizabeth I, but he seems to have made the best of all his setbacks to compose this magnificent collection of purely instrumental works, much of it bathed in the melancholy typical of late sixteenth-century England.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMusicall Humors – a collective of the finest gambists of their generation – performs the complete set of pavans, galliards and ‘almands’, grouped into suites, each with its own character. A character inspired by the music, but reinforced here by the changing composition of the consort and the players taking turns to perform the ‘top line’, so that each musician’s personal playing style gives each piece a specific colour.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eREVIEWS:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDunford immerses the five-person gamba ensemble led by Julien Léonard and Lucile Boulanger in a rich and often extremely fragile-seeming web of voices and moods with a composure and sovereignty that moves and inspires. Everything breathes in the most wonderfully sonorous interplay, nothing groaning excessively. And when they dance, they maintain their posture and dignity like a dream.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-- ConcertoNet\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe are faced with an absolutely referential recording, of intense and unprecedented beauty. Musicall Humors offers us the complete collection, but in a sequence of pavans followed by galliards, which refreshes our ears with the contrast, compared to the usual arrangement.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-- Scherzo\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Alpha","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46012618146026,"sku":"3760014199448","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/4190926-2966651.jpg?v=1778207455"},{"product_id":"dowland-lessons-lute-music","title":"Dowland: Lessons - Lute Music \/ Nordberg","description":"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn English Renaissance collections of music, the term ‘lessons’ is often used to describe instrumental pieces, even though they aren’t pedagogical exercises as such. But as Jonas Nordberg writes in an introduction to his new disc ‘there remains much in them to be studied’. John Dowland is one of the composers whose music was a driving force of the Early Music revival already at the beginning of the 20th century. He has also played a central role in the rediscovery of the lute itself, an ongoing process which began more than a hundred years ago. Like many other musicians, Jonas Nordberg is continuously exploring the intimate relationship between a score and the instrument it was written for: ‘The pieces by Dowland on this album contain an entire musical universe, in which I have spent many years, discovering new layers of meaning. In that way these lessons – in combination with the instrument on which I play them – have also been my teachers. So it is a great pleasure to invite you to share them with me, and to explore for yourselves the rich combination of melancholy, joy and beauty to be found in these works.’\u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"BIS","offers":[{"title":"SACD","offer_id":46012637642986,"sku":"7318599926278","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/4080196-2821999.jpg?v=1778249721"},{"product_id":"dowland-gorlinsky-huwet-milano-narvaez-visee-vanishing-point-0608917733624","title":"Dowland, Gorlinsky, Huwet, Milano, Narvaez \u0026 Visee: Vanishing Point","description":"\u003cp\u003eSofie Vanden Eynde writes of her newest release: “Would it be possible to articulate the inner reality of a burnout musically: to make a burnout audible, tangible, understandable and, who knows, avoidable? The result is Vanishing Point \/ Verdwijntijd, an autobiographical recital, a musical narrative, a journey: somewhere between fragile comfort and cautious happiness. Vanishing Point \/ Verdwijntijd can be listened to in different ways: not only as a lute recital, but also as a radio play with voice, lute and soundscapes.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Antarctica","offers":[{"title":"Vinyl","offer_id":46012702621930,"sku":"0608917733624","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/4140868-3207716.jpg?v=1778230323"},{"product_id":"dowland-lachrimae-1","title":"Dowland: Lachrimae","description":"John Dowland's Lachrimae cycle is among the finest surviving instrumental dance music of the turn of the seventeenth century.     This long awaited recording with the Capriccio Stravagante Renaissance Orchestra features new a instrumentation by Skip Sempe: 6 viols, 5 recorders, 2 cornetti, 3 trombones, 2 virginals and harpsichord.     Skip Sempe's new performance order of the twenty-one Lachrimae dances revives the tradition of Pavan and Galliard pairs, rather than treating them as isolated movements.     The idea of a 'Renaissance Orchestra' in which all the different instrumental consorts are brought together is the overlooked message of these sixteenth and seventeenth century publications. Large ensembles, for large or commemorative occasions, were every bit as much the 'composer's intention' as were smaller, intimate groups. This missing link has been proposed and provided by the concerts and recordings of the Capriccio Stravagante Renaissance Orchestra since the first years of the twenty-first century, and is one of their remarkable achievements in 'cutting through the noise'.","brand":"Paradizo","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46012703375594,"sku":"0865462000483","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/4410053-3332309.jpg?v=1778234907"},{"product_id":"d-o-w-l-n-d-r-a-k-e","title":"D O W L N D R A K E","description":"D O W L N D R A K E merges the worlds of soprano Annelies Van Gramberen and singer-songwriter Sim Van Thienen to create a bold sonic universe. Together, they weave the melancholic songs of the English troubadours John Dowland (1563-1626) and Nick Drake (1948-1974) into a layered tapestry of loops, electronics, and guitars, with Annelies' voice as a shining guide through the shadowy paths of the human soul.","brand":"Antarctica","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46012714516714,"sku":"608917736229","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/4466983-3467511.jpg?v=1778191465"},{"product_id":"dowland-sweet-melancholy","title":"Dowland: Sweet Melancholy","description":"French lutenist Florent Marie presents his second solo album on Carpe Diem Records: A collection of Renaissance lute music by the famous John Dowland. Recorded in a small church in the normannic countryside, this album features both melancholic and more uplifting compositions of the great English master of the lute, creating an emotional and colorful rendering of these mostly well-known and loved pieces.","brand":"Carpe Diem","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46012787196138,"sku":"4032324163365","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/4357700-3205607.jpg?v=1778212817"},{"product_id":"dowland-schubert-sor-elegiaque","title":"Dowland, Schubert \u0026 Sor: Elegiaque","description":"Romantic guitar in the hands of a virtuoso of international renown absolutely guarantees extraordinary musical experiences. Milosz Maczynski tells the history of melancholy from the Renaissance to Romanticism, masterfully using time and melodious phrases. The album is full of hidden emotions, captivating with an atmosphere of intimacy and contemplation.","brand":"DUX","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46012790669546,"sku":"5902547020372","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/4368333-3228334_c491304c-503e-4307-8ee6-acb16ec7d56e.jpg?v=1778232343"},{"product_id":"dowland-j-lute-songs-and-ayres","title":"Dowland, J.: Lute Songs and Ayres","description":"Classical Music","brand":"Centaur Records","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46012973908202,"sku":"044747286624","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/1292167.jpg?v=1778330237"},{"product_id":"j-dowland-blisseful-kisses","title":"J. Dowland: Blisseful Kisses","description":"From the four Books of Songs that appeared between 1597 and 1612, Hanna Thyssen and Susanne Peuker ('Fortune's Musicke') selected 15 of Dowland's most beautiful songs, weaving them together with several lute pieces into an atmospheric Dowland homage. It documents his great compositional mastery, and his instinct for unpretentious melodies and subtle text settings.","brand":"Musicaphon","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46013070016746,"sku":"4012476569437","price":8.49,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/2335653.jpg?v=1778313317"},{"product_id":"dowland-songs-for-soprano-and-guitar-mckenzie-241206","title":"Dowland: Songs for Soprano and Guitar \/ McKenzie, Bini","description":"John Dowland is without doubt one of the most famous English composers, the foremost exponent of the Golden Age of the Elizabethan Era of the 16th and 17th Century. Dowland’s songs fully reflect the spirit and tastes of the Elizabethan age, with their tendency towards deep melancholy and their pronounced focus on darkness, moonlight and night time. Despite the predominance of grief, sadness, tears and death there are also songs in which a sense of optimism, lightness and joy prevail. This new recording uses the classical guitar as accompanying instrument, played by Adriano Sebastiani. The young soprano Siphiwe McKenzie was twice nominated by the prestigious magazine Opernwelt as “Young Singer of the Year.” She sang in important theatres such as the Wiener Volksoper, Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires), Teatro Regio di Parma, Leipzig State Opera and many more.","brand":"Brilliant Classics","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46013084827882,"sku":"5028421944807","price":6.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/3446298_87717af3-f81d-4583-bab1-dfffef5bcf29.jpg?v=1778292984"},{"product_id":"dowland-whose-heavenly-touch","title":"Dowland: Whose Heavenly Touch","description":"This recording devoted to Dowland seems to open a door onto a secret garden, one tended and cultivated by two artists already well known for opera and song recitals that distill the chamber music principle into it's most intimate essence of expressive sound: soprano Mariana Flores, and lutenist Hopkinson Smith. Here they give us a Dowland programme straight from the heart, drawing on five of the composer's volumes of 'Songs or Ayres' printed in London between 1597 and 1612, laying bare Dowland's ecstatic and tortured soul as it oscillates between all the different states of melancholy love.","brand":"Naïve","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46013140730090,"sku":"0822186089415","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/3718795-2508369.jpg?v=1778269528"},{"product_id":"dowland-lachrimae-2","title":"Dowland: Lachrimae","description":"\"•The Brussels-based Hathor Consort, founded 2011, explores consort music stretching from the Renaissance to the Baroque era, using diverse instrumental combinations, with the viola da gamba as a starting point. \n • For this debut recording, the ensemble has chosen a pièce de résistance of the consort repertoire, the melancholic Lachrimae, or Seven Tears collection of John Dowland (1563-1626).\"","brand":"Fuga Libera","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46013193978090,"sku":"5400439007185","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/2562782.jpg?v=1778289636"},{"product_id":"dowland-lachrimae","title":"Dowland: Lachrimae","description":"The seven Lachrimae Pavan of 1604 are widely held to mark not only the high point of Dowland’s work but the entire genre of viol consort music. Dowland takes a lamenting pavan that he had written some years earlier and develops its theme into a cycle which takes the listener through different states of tearfulness, from loneliness to despair through hope to love and finally joy – the ‘true tears’ of the final pavan. In its contrapuntal mastery and its ingenuity in the treatment of a single theme, the Lachrimae cycle stands alongside The Art of Fugue composed by J.S. Bach a century and a half later. Most recordings of the Lachrimae use the standard instrumentation of a consort of viols, ranging from treble to bass and accompanied by a lute. For his second recording of the cycle, however, the Italian violist Cristiano Contadin has boldly created a broken consort performance which mixes the recorder and also early violin and viola in with the uniquely grainy timbre of the viols. Such an instrumentation exploits the long association of the recorder with music of lamentation, and makes a historical connection with, for example, the cantatas of Bach. Contadin explains with a booklet essay that his aim in performance is to recover the ‘passionate’ nature of this music as Dowland envisaged it in his own written preface to the score, and indeed there is nothing dry or constricted about the performance he directs from the treble viol. Now, with three generations of period performance research and practice under their belts, musicians are beginning to play this music with the kind of freedom and spontaneity and emotion they would accord (in other ways) to Brahms, and this new recording deserves comparison with the most distinguished accounts from the recent past.","brand":"Brilliant Classics","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46013263839466,"sku":"5028421956992","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/3730545-2571784.jpg?v=1778275078"},{"product_id":"musicall-banquet-399487","title":"Dowland: A Musicall Banquet \/ Zúñiga, Ensemble A Musicall Banquet","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1610, the lutenist Robert Dowland, who had just turned 19, published two anthologies in quick succession that are today considered vital for our understanding of both the lute and Elizabethan vocal music. The first, A Varietie of Lute Lessons, which as the title suggests features lessons but also a long essay on European lute production, contains important information on lute performance, in part originating from his esteemed father, John Dowland. It is not far-fetched to imagine that Robert’s father also had a part to play in the second book, A Musicall Banquet – John had returned from the Danish court some time previously and is represented by several pieces in the anthology. Adhering to the culinary metaphor of the collection’s title, this Banquet comprises ‘recipes’ from different countries with different levels of technical difficulty, and is made up of ‘dishes’ already taste-tested so as not to poison ‘diners’, in other words, established pieces that were nonetheless as yet unknown to the English public. Robert opens his anthology with a large selection of English songs, taken from what was by that point a well-established repertoire: at the time Banquet was published, an impressive 24 books of songs had already been printed, beginning with John Dowland’s First Booke of Songes or Ayres, published in 1797. The next group of pieces in the collection belong to a genre that could be considered the most similar to the English song, the French air de cour, in the sense that the latter, at least in its most ancient form, influenced the development of the former. The air de cour for voice and lute was enjoying enormous success thanks to the scores Robert Ballard began publishing in 1608. The selection of Italian pieces is the most significant part of the collection.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Brilliant Classics","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46013359587562,"sku":"5028421962412","price":6.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/3931096-2701278.jpg?v=1778227551"},{"product_id":"fancy-293525","title":"Dowland: A Fancy \/ Bor Zuljan","description":"\u003cimg src=\"\/graphics\/features\/gramophone_choice.jpg\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The first notes of the descending chromatic theme break the silence and it seems as if time has stopped. The listener is drawn into the world of John Dowland, the greatest lutenist of all, in a journey through multiple shades of melancholy and lucent hope. Never before had the lute sounded as expressive and colorful as in these masterful Fancies, as dynamic as in these sparkling dances: Renaissance lute music here reached its summit. Bor Zuljan explores these qualities in his debut solo recording, breathing new life into Dowland's masterpieces. Bor Zuljan (1987) is active in different musical genres and projects and searches for a synthesis of contemporary and early music, different world music traditions, jazz and improvisation. He plays guitars, different kinds of lutes, vihuela, oud, tar and other early and traditional plucked-strings instruments. The search for the connection between sound, image and word led him to collaborate in different interdisciplinary projects. He is performing regularly as soloist and with ensembles, such as Le Concert Brisé, Geneva Camerata, Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble Contrechamps, Vortex, in duo with Dusan Bogdanovic, as well as with his ensemble La Lyra. His projects have been presented in festivals such as the Laus Polyphoniae in Antwerpen, Oude Muziek in Utrecht, Mousiké in Bari, Festival Radovljica in Slovenia and many others. He also performed in China, Algeria, Germany, France, Switzerland, Spain, Denmark and in Croatia.","brand":"Ricercar","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46013488038122,"sku":"5400439004252","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/3837545-2646306.jpg?v=1778260176"},{"product_id":"dowland-lachrimae-or-seaven-teares","title":"Dowland: Lachrimae or Seaven Teares","description":"The Italian Gambe di Legno has evolved into one of the leading ensembles of it's kind in recent years. Originally founded as a consort of viols, the ensemble has grown to include an ensemble of vocalists, instrumentalists and choir.","brand":"Fra Bernardo","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46017674313962,"sku":"4260307413033","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/2266478.jpg?v=1778319164"},{"product_id":"dowland","title":"Dowland","description":"John Dowland (1563–1626) is recognized as the greatest English composer of lute music and songs. Michael Butten presents a collection of the composer’s most popular and beautiful songs arranged for the classical guitar. A whole album of Dowland performed on classical guitar is rare, usually heard on the lute, so FHR are pleased to be able to present this release. In this recording, Butten plays with a very beautiful sound, incredible colors, lovely melodic phrasing and immaculate control of tone, which draws you right in. This is a spellbinding album, wonderfully recorded. Born in Berkshire, Michael Butten studied at Junior Academy, where he twice won the Lower Strings Prize, before being awarded a scholarship at the Academy to continue his studies with Michael Lewin. In his first year he won the Julian Bream Prize, adjudicated by Julian Bream, and, shortly afterwards, gained the Nervi\/Bodrato Prize as the youngest semi-finalist at the Michele Pittaluga Guitar Competition in Alessandria. On completing his BMus degree with first class honours, he received from the Academy one of the Regency Awards for Notable Achievement and in June 2014, as a postgraduate with a scholarship from Help Musicians UK, he became the first guitarist ever to win the R.A.M. Club Prize. He was the 1st prize winner at the 2016 Ivor Mairants Guitar Award, and is a Yeoman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians. Upon leaving the Academy in 2016 he also won the David Russell Prize.","brand":"First Hand Records","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46017678770410,"sku":"5060216349084","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/3919339_6eef4380-770c-44ce-aeec-1008a2fbeb7a.jpg?v=1778244895"},{"product_id":"semper-dowland-fentross-849969","title":"Semper Dowland \/ Fentross","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn Dowland’s words: “ingenuous profession of Musicke, which from my childhoode I have ever aymed at,... the better to attain so excellent a science”. Mike Fentross achieves this “divine science of musicke” by wooing his audience by “speaking harmony” on his sweet lute. His art entwines harmony and poetry, albeit often a melancholic art, which is then framed by the proportions of rhythm. His art teaches, stirs and delights the heart and soul of his honorable listeners in profound ways. Mike Fentross first studied with Toyohiko Satoh at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, then with Nigel North and José Miguel Moreno. He has built a solid reputation as a “continuist”, playing in renowned orchestras like Les Arts Florissants, and is much in demand in his country as well as abroad. He plays and records regularly with great European ensembles such as Capriccio Stravagante, Les Arts Florissants, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, the Harp Consort, the New London Consort and Al Ayre Espanol. In 1991 he founded La Sfera Armoniosa, a group devoted to the performance of 17th-century music. Since 1996 Mike Fentross is guest professor at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Zefir Records","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46020000350442,"sku":"8717774570760","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/3959191-2697268.jpg?v=1778258274"},{"product_id":"dowland-awake-sweet-love","title":"Dowland: Awake Sweet Love","description":"In John Dowland’s both intimate and expressive songs it’s all about ‘speaking harmony’. This is what vocalist David Munderloh and lutenist Julian Behr, in their merging of voice with lute, attempt to impart as they search for the composer’s essence in this album of select songs from this Renaissance master, interspersed with a handful of instrumental lute solos. Currently residing in Basel, Switzerland, American tenor and former Chanticleer member David Munderloh's repertoire includes music of several musical eras, from medieval to 19th c. lieder as well as modern contemporary.","brand":"Ars Produktion","offers":[{"title":"SACD","offer_id":46024131772650,"sku":"4260052381694","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/2832186_1d7c21d8-fc1a-458e-b38c-a22bc97881f2.jpg?v=1778305333"},{"product_id":"dowland-consort-music-songs-rose-consort-of-193554","title":"Dowland: Consort Music \u0026 Songs \/ Rose Consort Of Viols","description":"DOWLAND: Consort Music and Songs","brand":"Naxos","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46025404219626,"sku":"730099432627","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/199300.jpg?v=1778346568"},{"product_id":"dowland-complete-lute-music-nigel-north-128664","title":"Dowland: Complete Lute Music \/ Nigel North","description":"One of the great Elizabethan masters of the lute also was the period's most celebrated composer for the instrument. Four centuries later, a fellow Englishman-Nigel North-became the leading interpreter of Dowland's beautiful, melancholy creations. This set begins with the Fantasies (or Fancyes), which match melody with improvisation. Next come the pavans including the most famous of it's time, the Lachrimae Pavan. Disc three explores the principal dances of the era: pavans, galliards and almains. Go from My Window; Walsingham, and more dances and songs complete this tribute to the English Orpheus!","brand":"Naxos","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46025565143274,"sku":"747313401635","price":30.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/1579668.jpg?v=1778338563"},{"product_id":"what-if-a-day","title":"What if a day","description":"John Dowland was the most famous English lutenist composer and his considerable reputation during his lifetime extended across Europe as a result of his extensive travels and appointments at several continental courts. In the address \"To the reader\" in his song book A Pilgrimes Solace published in 1612 he recorded that \"being I am now entered into the fiftieth year of mine age\" which means he was born in or around 1563. By 1588, when he was twenty-five, he was already listed amongst English musicians worthy of honor in Dr. John Case's Apologia musices and was again listed as one of England's greatest musicians in Francis Meres Palladis Tamia of 1598, but had to wait until 1612 to gain the appointment in the English court that he so much desired. Paul Beier lives in Milan, Italy, and teaches lute at the Civica Scuola di Musica Claudio Abbado. Alongside his concert and teaching activity, he also studies and researches historical sources of the lute repertoire. His recordings have received prizes and awards in the specialized international press.","brand":"Stradivarius","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46025989095658,"sku":"8011570371287","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/3914392.jpg?v=1778243263"},{"product_id":"orpheus-in-england-dowland-purcell-songs-and-141071","title":"Orpheus In England: Dowland \u0026 Purcell: Songs And Lute Music \/ Kirkby, Lindberg","description":"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan class=\"COMPOSER12\"\u003eDOWLAND \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12b\"\u003eSongs and Lute Solos. \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"COMPOSER12\"\u003ePURCELL \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12b\"\u003eSongs and Lute Solos \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"BULLET12\"\u003e • \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12\"\u003e Emma Kirkby (sop); Jakob Lindberg (lt) \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"BULLET12\"\u003e • \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12\"\u003e BIS CD 1725 (75:19 \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12\"\u003eText and Translation) \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan\u003eIt is almost superfluous to add a review to the header, for this disc provides exactly what the listing promises. There are nine songs and five solo lute pieces by Dowland, and seven songs and seven solo lute pieces by Purcell, culled from various sources, in performances by two of the greatest artists of our time that simply are beyond exquisite in every way. All is subtlety, refinement, delicacy, intimacy, and deeply penetrating expressiveness, in which every word, every inflection, and every chord takes its share and lightly carries its burden. Above all, it is art that is utterly natural and free from self-conscious artifice. If somehow you have never broached this repertoire or these performers before now, look no further for a starting point and take the plunge immediately. Those with prior acquaintance will need no further urging from me to regard this as an essential acquisition. The recorded sound is fairly close, with a pleasant and not excessive degree of warmth and reverberation. Intelligent program notes and full texts are provided. Highest possible recommendation, and an immediate nominee for the Classical Hall of Fame. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan style=\"font-weight:bold\"\u003eFANFARE: James A. 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Soloist: Nigel North.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Naxos","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46026297966826,"sku":"747313044979","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/1280277.jpg?v=1778224619"},{"product_id":"mister-dowlands-midnight","title":"Mister Dowland's Midnight","description":"Swiss guitarist Christoph Denoth explores the enchanting lute music of JohnDowland using his own arrangements made from Dowland’s original handwritten scores. + “Dowland, the melancholic poet of the lute, is free of any instrumental limitation. The melodic, contrapuntal and harmonic approach of his music is both wondrous and unique. Its expression is one of noble sadness, melancholy and genuine beauty. -  Christoph Denoth","brand":"Signum Classics","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46026536550634,"sku":"635212038222","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/2580327.jpg?v=1778289332"},{"product_id":"blame-not-my-lute-89636","title":"Blame Not My Lute: Elizabethan Lute Music and Poetry \/ McFarlane, Aubry Davis","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eREVIEWS\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is something of a concept album. It’s also a programme that has been toured and performed in concert many times and reaches fruition as a disc. It takes Elizabethan and Jacobean lute music and marries it to the poetry and theatre of the time. Sometimes a single track is given over to verse or a short scene from a play, spoken by Robert Aubry Davis; but also we hear a speech or lyric spoken above, as it were, lute accompaniment. This sometimes makes things difficult to judge artistically vis a vis Ronn McFarlane’s lute playing, but it’s a disc to be measured against a rather wider canvass than usual, a multi-disciplinary words and music presentation. \u003cbr\u003e   \u003cbr\u003e Most of the music is by Dowland, but there is one piece by Campion, another by Byrd and others by our old pal, Anonymous. The theatrical performances derive from Shakespeare - Henry VIII, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona - as well as Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness. There are poems by Wyatt, with which we begin and end, Robert Herrick and Samuel Daniel. Thomas D’Urfey’s wickedly naughty \u003ci\u003eThe Wanton Trick\u003c\/i\u003e is here too. \u003cbr\u003e   \u003cbr\u003e As an example of a theatrical presentation it works well. Whether it has longevity on disc is a moot point, because some of the extracts are very brief, and also because the lute, played behind the voice, is demonstrably there for evocative effect. Ronn McFarlane has a number of discs to his name of lute music and is indeed a fine player. There are times when he inclined to the brusque and overly metrical - one thinks of \u003ci\u003eMrs Winter’s Jump\u003c\/i\u003e for example; the woman in question must have been quite a motoric figure if his playing is anything to go by.\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Next we have the spoken element. The method in the Wyatt ‘title track’, and others, is this. Davis speaks the first stanza, and then McFarlane joins in behind him. Note though that they were separately recorded.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The texts are printed in full, and the booklet has been nicely designed and amusingly written (by Davis). Indeed the disc is cleverly programmed.\u003cbr\u003e   \u003cbr\u003e -- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sono Luminus","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46027366367466,"sku":"053479210524","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/1612366.jpg?v=1778332804"},{"product_id":"dowland-tunes-of-sad-despaire-73108","title":"Dowland: Tunes Of Sad Despaire","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis recording fulfills one of Dominique Visse’s life ambitions, which dates from the late 1970s and the period during which he studied and worked with Alfred Deller: to record an album of John Dowland’s songs. And who better than to record with than celebrated English viol consort Fretwork, who have made a number of historic recordings of Dowland’s music? Visse is also joined by Renaud Delaigue in rarely-performed versions of three of the songs.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Satitino","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46027369251050,"sku":"3760061191211","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/2114963.jpg?v=1778319449"},{"product_id":"lachrimae-or-seaven-teares","title":"LACHRIMAE - OR SEAVEN TEARES","description":"Classical Music","brand":"Saydisc","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":46027385012458,"sku":"5013133305527","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/3423\/3066\/files\/1846758.jpg?v=1778254103"},{"product_id":"dowland-a-game-of-mirrors","title":"Dowland: A Game of Mirrors","description":"\"• “Dowland – A Game of Mirrors” is a sophisticated merging of modern jazz and English renaissance music. 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