Byrd: Keyboard Works
Stephen Farr (organ)
Resonus RES10326 66:06 mins
From Leighton and MacMillan to JS Bach and John Bull, Stephen Farr brings trademark intellectual rigour to a wide-ranging repertoire. Just in time to catch the end of the anniversary year, his latest release is single-mindedly devoted to William Byrd – and he returns to the Taylor and Boody organ in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, a chamber instrument of seven stops, built with the music of the English Renaissance in mind – and tuned to a temperament that would likely have been familiar to Byrd. It’s a timely release. For many (if not most), it’s Byrd’s vocal music that first springs to mind, and over a decade has passed since Davitt Moroney’s monumental traversal of the complete keyboard for Hyperion – a project that straddled seven discs and six different instruments including a muselar virginal.
For non-completists, Farr’s snapshot is adroitly chosen. Played with trenchant ebullience, to close there’s Byrd’s own arrangement (probably) of his Marian motet O quam gloriosum est regnum. Farr opens with ‘A Lesson of Voluntarie’ from My Ladye Nevells Booke. It’s unpacked with a stately inevitability and unswerving structural command. Characteristic too is Farr’s adventurous approach to ornamentation, which always sounds effortlessly natural. Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la (based on the first six ascending notes of the scale) is despatched with magisterial dignity, and the contrapuntal clarity is captivating – necessary when Byrd’s fertile imagination takes wing. On harpsichord Richard Egarr (Linn) is perhaps a little more ruminative in the Fantasia, H4/MB13; and Moroney remains indispensable; but Farr’s Byrd is a supremely welcome addition to the ‘aviary’. Paul Riley