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GRAMOPHONE (032023)
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Reviewer : David Fallows

These days, whenever five viol players are gathered together, somebody is going to haul out the Dow Partbooks. There are lots of good reasons for this. One is that there is a gorgeous published facsimile, all in full colour, issued only 10 years ago. Another is that everything is beautifully legible: Robert Dow, who was a lawyer by profession and also a fellow of All Souls College, had actually been employed as a teacher of penmanship. Every page of his partbooks is a delight to the eye, copied in black ink on printed red staves. And that’s a bizarre detail: there is now quite an industry identifying and researching printed music staves in the 16th century; Dow seems to be the only known example printed in red. Perhaps he commissioned it specially.

There have been previous discs devoted to Dow; but this recording seems to approach the chamber-music aspect of the collection. Some listeners may wonder whether it is ideal to hear some of the best motets of Tallis and Byrd played just on viols but The Earle his Viols play always with sane musical decisions and very often sound absolutely gorgeous. Monika Mauch (singing with ‘historical pronunciation’, though we are not told from which region: some of it sounds vaguely Mummerset) sounds much more convincing in her lower register; she is therefore particularly successful in Byrd’s lament for the death of Philip Sidney and in the concluding anonymous O Lord of whom I do depend. Programme notes are available only online but for all that thoroughly informative.

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