Composer: Jacob Arcadelt, Valentin Bakfark, Joan Ambrosio Dalza, John Dowland, John Johnson, Giovanni Pacoloni, Pierre Regnault dit Sandrin, Johann Sommer
Performer: Oleg Timofeyev, Sarmatica
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Dorian Sono Luminus
Catalogue: DSL-92134
Release: 2011
Size: 314 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
01. Brack: Ick rew unth klak
02. Dalza: Pavana alla ferrarase (version for lute)
03. Dowland: Fantasia in G minor, P. 6
04. Johnson: Passamezzo Pavan
05. Prauiem doznal prziachielia swego
06. Prauiem doznal prziachielia swego
07. Dolenka moia lykhaia
08. Arcadelt: Quand’io pens’al martire – Saluator noster
09. Drusina: Fantasia
10. La rocha el fuso
11. Sandrin: Doulce memoire (Cancion)
12. Passamezzo
13. Pacoloni: Fantasia bellisima
14. Psalm 25, “Non mortui laudabunt te Domine”
15. Sommer: Susanna paduanna
16. Dowland: Suzanna Galliard
17. Passamezzo, “Nygdem Themu”
18. Bakfark: Non dite mai que io habui torto
19. Tantum ergo sacramentum
Raw passion and ancient energy electrifies the first release from Sarmatica on Sono Luminus. Led by world renowned guitarist Oleg Timofeyev, Sarmatica truly embodies the excitement of the music and the rich culture that developed it.
A medium-size anthology of vocal and instrumental music of the time, the Lviv Lute Tablature offers a great range of genre and national variety in its content. Next to the lute intabulations (i.e., ornamented arrangements of vocal music for solo lute) of the most popular works of Orlando di Lasso, Clément Janequin and Pierre Sandrin one finds in it anonymous songs and dances, professional compositions more modest in scope. Aside from the compositions of Italian, French, German, and Polish origin that found their way into this collection, there are also the three virtuosic fantasias by the celebrated English lutenist John Dowland.
Oleg Timofeyev is an American musicologist and musician of Russian origin, specializing in lute and Russian guitar. He is best known for his pioneering work in the discovery, promotion, interpretation, and authentic performance of the repertoire for the 19th- and 20th-century Russian seven-string guitar. He has worked for the revival of Russian music played with authentic technique on the seven-string guitar, often in collaboration with other artists, including the Russian Roma guitarist Sasha Kolpakov, the Kolpakov Trio, and recently with the American guitarist John Schneidermann as the duo The Czar’s Guitars, releasing the CD Souveneirs of Russia on the Sono Luminus label.
SARMATICA was created in 2009, when the Russian-American lutenist and musicologist Oleg Timofeyev arrived in Kyiv to teach as a Fulbright scholar. Soon he was invited to perform at the Seventh Early Music Festival in Lviv, where he met Danylo Pertsov and several other perspective members. A graduate of Kyiv Conservatory, Danylo Pertsov is an adventurous composer, a multi-instrumentalist early music specialist, and an expert on Ukrainian vocal traditions. It is due to Danylo’s free spirit, imagination, and compositional skills that this program offers so much variety in sound and concept. Mikhail Kachalov plays fiddle in a variety of styles, from Middle Ages and Renaissance to Scandinavian and Yugoslavian folk traditions. A graphic designer by training, Lubov Plavaska studied with Mekhdi Jusefian, the famous Persian composer, leader of ensemble “Jaam,” and performer on tar, setar, and tombak. In addition to her competence in the music of Iran, Kurds and Crimean Tatars, Lubov has studied the traditional Ukrainian singing and the Orthodox liturgy. Taras Kompanichenko is a celebrated epic singer of Ukraine and the leader of his own ensemble, Chorea Kozacky. Sergey Okhrimchuk is one of the most sought after violinists in Ukraine, equally creative in early Baroque and contemporary idioms.
With last year’s release of Souvenirs of Russia (DSL92112) from The Czar’s Guitars, as well as numerous other releases from the Dorian catalog, Mr. Timofeyev is currently working on a multi-disc box set which will cover the full history of the Russian guitar (to be released in 2012).
his release is something of a revelation: taking materials known for the most part only to scholars, lutenist Oleg Timofeyev and the Ukrainian ensemble Sarmatica have created a convincing realization of a musical document, the Lviv Lute Tablature, that has so far been known mostly to scholars. The Ukrainian city of Lviv has had many names and borne many nationalities over its nearly millennium-long existence, and the relevant tradition here is not Ukrainian but Polish: the manuscript, compiled between the 1550s and the early 18th century, reflected the high-water mark of Polish influence in the form of the vast Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This collection of lute music was international in scope, containing music from composers as geographically distant as England’s John Dowland. The variety of lute pieces would be enough to justify purchase in itself, but that’s just the beginning. Timofeyev and Sarmatica (the name refers to a sort of Polish national aesthetic ideology) create both a program and a sound that vividly illustrate the cross-currents present in this repertory, offering both solo lute pieces and ensemble arrangements featuring the lute. The biggest difference from English or German ensemble music is that, according to these performers, the Eastern European context admitted folk influences in a way Western music did not. In the instrumental realm this involved single-reed winds that had a rougher, louder tone than their Western counterparts, and some of the dances here sound something like klezmer music. A performance like that of Arcadelt’s Quando io pensal martire ad te Salutor noster (track 8) is even more startling, with what the booklet notes justifiably call “belting voice.” The result is an album of music with lute that both remains specific to a place and presents a whole innovative model for performing Renaissance repertory. Like so much of Polish culture, this album deserves more attention than it will probably get. Sono Luminus, on top of all this, has done a superb job recording the lute.