Concert Review of Cantigas from the Land of Three Faiths
Rose Ensemble enchants in music of three faiths
By Donald Rosenberg / Plain Dealer Reporter
February 3, 2009
Toward the end of the Rose Ensemble's Cleveland debut Monday at Case Western Reserve University's Harkness Chapel, artistic director Jordan Sramek thanked the Chapel, Court & Countryside series for honoring his group with an appearance on such a distinguished early-music roster.
Memo to Sramek: The pleasure was ours.
With its program, "Cantigas from the Land of Three Faiths," the Rose Ensemble introduced a brilliant blend of scholarly intrigue and superior performance chops. No one is likely to argue with the Rose's mission: Reawakening the Ancient.
In fact, the ensemble from St. Paul, Minnesota, does more than reawaken. It energizes old music to the point where it sounds as new and alive as a listener could imagine. The Rose achieves artistic alchemy through alert, serious and often jovial attention to vocal and instrumental matters.
On this occasion, the group explored Renaissance music of Spain and environs, with an emphasis on Judaic, Bedouin and Christian sources. Only one composer, Italy's Salamone Rossi, would have been familiar even to early-music mavens. Most of the pieces were traditional Sephardic, Arabic and Turkish songs and instrumental selections.
Some works must have compelled audience members to wonder where this music had been all their lives. Among the treasures was Juan del Encina's "Una sanosa porfia" ("A terrible and hopeless struggle"), which begins with women chanting and blossoms into something ravishing as men's voices, harmony and drum arrive.
Another stunner was a Bedouin song about Abraham, "Barhum ya Barhum," which teams exuberant chorus and drum with rebec and ud—ancient stringed instruments. Throughout the program, Ginna Watson applied elegance and vitality to rebec, harp and vielle (violin), Tim O'Brien tapped drums vividly (often singing while playing) and David Burk was the master of all ud things he surveyed.
In the vocal department, the Rose is an equal-opportunity employer, giving solos to all of its expert singers, who range from booming basses to ethereal sopranos. They sang in Spanish, Hebrew and several other languages that never appeared to twist tongues.
The voices gleamed in Rossi's "Keter yittenu lakh," an unaccompanied Jewish blessing that balances rich harmonies with chants. And the singers relished the earthiness in Encina's "Hoy comamos y bebamos," a drinking song catapulted by country-style fiddling, tambourine and cow bones (early castanets).
Given the Rose's charismatic gifts, claims of modesty should be set aside. A quick return to Cleveland is mandatory.