Recorded well over
a decade ago Arabesque’s salute to Dowland
has variety. Two luminaries, Julianne
Baird and lutenist David Tayler, were
then in the first years of their mastery
of this repertoire and subsequent projects
have confirmed their early promise.
Baird has emerged as a fine exponent
and this disc, ironically, points to
the ways in which she has since consolidated
her technique and expressive abilities,
of which more below. Tayler serves notice
of his imaginative lute and Orpharion
playing whilst the DeCormier Singers
add consort variety, though they are
not specialists in the same way and
offer rather less rewards than the two
soloists.
In Toss Not My Soul
we can hear that the Singers’ voices
are not especially well blended and
that there are extraneous strands and
passing deficiencies. Fine Knacks
For Ladies shows them in better
light perhaps because the song itself
is not introspective and Now, Oh
Now I Needs Must Part is better
still but overall there is not much
shaping to their lines and not much
atmospheric identification with the
music.
Julianne Baird shows
more of a sense of intensity though
she has a certain blanched neutrality
in even such as Time Stands Still.
In I Saw My Lady Weep we
can hear her real purity of line and
sense of placement of expressive peaks
but overall her performance is marred
by her then bulging vibrato which sounds
very intrusive – it sounds after the
note is started and widens appreciably,
not under control. It mars Mourn,
Day Is With Darkness Fled for example
quite dramatically.
So whilst there are
virtues here I can’t really suggest
you start your Dowland quest here. There’s
certainly no real point of comparison
between these performances and those
of Kirkby, Skinner, Rooley et al on
L’Oiseau-Lyre.
Jonathan Woolf
Julianne Baird (soprano) 
