I must state right
at the start that for a while I worked
with Catherine Bott when we were both
contemporary students at the Guildhall
School of Music and Drama. This was
during the mid-1970s. I can also remember
that, when she was about 19 or 20, she
gave a recital at the college when she
sang some Kurt Weill. She lost her way
on that occasion but kept the tune by
singing "I’m zorry but I have forgot
ze vords". This same self-confidence
that she seems to have brought with
her straight from school gave her such
a good start and has enabled her especially
to communicate her love of medieval
music and poetry.
This amazing disc could
only have been produced by Hyperion.
The only question is why they have taken
so long to release it. This cultured,
beautifully presented programme is typical
of them. Commercial issues aside the
disc, with its subtle pleasures, needed
to be made.
It is her work with
Philip Pickett’s Early Music Consort
that has made Catherine Bott a relatively
well known name. Her fellow performers
here have also worked with Pickett and
are complete masters of these instruments.
They are also great improvisers as can
be heard in the last track, the ‘Four
Planctus’. These Spanish laments are
each preceded by an improvisatory passage.
I find this track, the longest on the
disc, the least convincing. This is
partially because Bott changes her vocal
delivery in line with the harsher Mediterranean
folk voices - voice that can still be
heard today. Her excellent booklet essay
tells how these laments made a considerable
and moving impression in performance.
I might be insensitive but they didn’t
move me as much as some of the other
songs. Try, for example, the unaffected
and gentle rendering of Bedyngham’s
‘O rosa bella’ (often attributed to
Dunstable) and Ventadorn’s heartrending
lament for lost love ‘Can vei la lauzeta
mover’.
Catherine Bott wrote
the lively, chatty and very helpful
booklet notes. Amidst her useful comments
on the music she also writes of the
genesis of the project. The biography
section tells of a concert they were
to do in Spain. It was advertised as
‘Catherine Bott and friends’ and "Somehow
the name stuck, and it has the merit
of being true". They have performed
regularly in Spain and elsewhere ever
since.
Bott herself, when
writing about the recording venue, exclaims
that yes, they have recorded this CD
of atmospheric medieval music "in
a studio"! She goes on to tell
us of the advantages with no "distant
roar of a lawn-mower" or an "overhead
helicopter". She adds that in the
studio "we could clothe our completely
straight performances of medieval and
renaissance repertoire with the sound
of a lovely country church if we wanted,
or perhaps a courtly chamber".
So this they do right from the start
with the 13th Century Prisoner’s
Song. For this we are transported to
a vast echoey and inhospitable stone
cavern to emphasise the writer’s prayer:
"only God can bring us out of this"
(prison). It’s an effective start to
the disc. Bott points out that she has
deliberately chosen songs which she
especially likes. That must have been
difficult given the vast repertoire
with which she is familiar.
Some, like the Prisoner’s
Song, were recorded thirty or more years
ago by a singer I know. Catherine quite
admired her and that singer was Jantina
Noorman of Musica Reservata fame. Jantina
also recorded, memorably I think, the
bird song ‘Par maintes foys’. Bott’s
approach is much more elegant, clear
and focused but perhaps lacks her predecessor’s
natural energy.
Apparently it was David
Munrow and James Bowman’s recording
of Landini’s ‘Giunta vaga bilta’ which
helped to inspire her love of medieval
music. Perhaps she is too much in awe
of that performance as I find her, unusually,
a little diffident and bland here.
‘O rosa bella’, once
thought to be by Dunstable, comes off
beautifully with an easy, natural flow.
It’s good to hear ‘Le greygnour bien’
done with the upper voice singing the
text. David Munrow also recorded it,
but unsuccessfully, for instruments
alone. It’s an odd piece really. In
her notes Bott describes it as clever,
which rhythmically it is, but I am not
at all sure that it works. The fiddles
on the lower lines struggle to balance
adequately and Catherine Bott’s beautiful
legato line are at odds with the surrounding
texture. I wonder if anyone has tried
it as a three part vocal composition?
Talking of instruments,
the two gentlemen shine a little on
their own. Especially worthy of mention
is Ciconia’s ‘Una panthera’, a three
part piece which is here performed energetically
without the singer ... how, you might
ask. By double-tracking, with Levy adding
the middle part on a separate track.
As Bott says, they were in the studio
and they "had the technology".
In addition some songs such as Meaux’s
attractive ‘Trop est mes maris’ include
passages between verses for the fiddles
alone.
I should imagine that
the three musicians here, especially
Bott, are so well known by now in their
various fields that anyone, not just
early music fiends, will be interested
and inquisitive enough to buy it.
I could go on describing
the CD for hundreds of more words; time
to stop and sum up. The performances,
the music, the liner notes, are all
outstanding. I enjoyed practically everything
that this disc offered with the Dufay
being the star. I know of no just cause
or impediment why everyone else shouldn’t
do so as well.
Gary Higginson
Catherine Bott and friends (Pavlo Beznosiuk and
Mark Levy (medieval fiddles)) 
for
details
