Description
This CD is part of a trilogy of recordings comprising of music for solo lute by John Dowland interpreted by Mike Fentross. The first CD (Zefir Records ZEF 9658) includes recently-identified Dowland music based on the fascinating archival work of André Nieuwlaat: works that perhaps can now be associated as Dowland’s authorship, after tedious research into subjects like the provenance of paper, palaeographical investigations, musical concordances, and finally the receptive ears of Fentross to recognise Dowland in formally anonymous lute pieces.
With this second CD, Fentross returns to the nest, to his childhood image of what is generally considered music by Dowland. This invariably means embracing Diana Poulton’s Dowland-world which culminates in her two principal publications, the biography John Dowland (1972) and his hundred solo lute pieces found in The Collected Lute Music of John Dowland: Lute tablature and keyboard notation (1974). The authenticity of some of these pieces in this bible for the lute can now be challenged, but the pieces chosen for this recording transcend an ascetic research topic. Fentross performs the pieces that mean the most to him from Poulton’s book and those that can delight todays public. The recording is a homage to this lady who dedicated her whole life to researching, publishing and playing Dowland. Fentross literally ‘interprets’ Poulton’s Dowland.
The final CD of this Dowland trilogy shall consist of truly 100% guaranteed music by John Dowland. The complete set in any case, is full of impassioned English music for solo lute that touches the heart like no other.
