The Portrait Players offered a fascinating window into the past at Tuesday’s concert, with a programme of early classical music played on historical string instruments from the 17th and 18th century. Accompanying soprano Claire Wood were Kristiina Watt, plucking base notes on a long-necked theorbo or strumming a lute, and Miriam Nohl playing a viola da gamba using an underhand bow hold.
The trio’s programme, billed as A madness most discreet, painted love in all its glorious forms – proper and fulsome, improper and discrete, and the deadly state of ‘love sickness’. During the first half, early classical works written by Le Camus, Campion, Marais, D’Ambruys and Handel took the audience back to the Salons of Paris and Rome. These salons were run by women but frequented by men using alter egos to hide the truth behind their feelings, expressed in song. The second half remained with the love theme but explored love through musical theatre pieces by Purcell and Corbetta.
The Cavendish Hall proved an excellent venue for the trio as the intimacy of the hall suited the more limited projection of their flat-backed instruments. The trio were generous in sharing the historical genesis of their music and the quirks that playing the instruments entailed. The gut strings of the theorbo and viol needed regular tuning throughout the concert, while the theorbo with its extended neck, housing a second pegbox, looked especially demanding. Claire Wood’s exquisite voice and clear diction easily complimented the quieter tones emerging from the historical string instruments.
This niche genre of classical music, song and instrumentation, knowledgeably played by this talented trio, provided an enjoyable and unique experience for the Peak Music audience.