For its 50th anniversary gala, the London international festival of early music presented a couple of star turns. The first was Jane Chapman, professor of harpsichord at the Royal College of Music, a fleet-fingered performer with an agreeably chatty podium manner. The second was a brand-new double-manual harpsichord. Immaculately crafted by Italian makers Guido and Lorenzo Bizzi for the performance and festival exhibition, it’s based on an 18th-century instrument by Belgian maker Pascal Taskin who was born exactly 300 years ago. Perched on the platform, its ebony and scarlet tortoiseshell flanks shimmering with gilt and its innards festooned with paintings of birds and flowers, it nearly stole the show.
Fortunately, Chapman’s programme had enough showstoppers to hold its own, a smörgåsbord of keyboard music spanning a century and a half. Bach’s adventurous Chromatic Fantasia got things off to an intrepid start, Chapman impeccably stylish if not entirely flawless. The harpsichord shone, parading a silvery timbre in the upper register and a rich warmth down below.
In the first half, serious-minded Toccatas by Frescobaldi and Froberger were offset by colourful suites by François Couperin and Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. Chapman’s exquisitely decorated Couperin was capped by a grand passacaille, its stately repetitions advancing like so many powdered courtiers.
The second half commemorated the 400th anniversary of William Byrd’s death with his lively La Volta and a great deal of other bird-related music, including a bravura performance of Rameau’s La Poule (surely the most delicious depiction of a chicken in classical music). A pair of theatrical gems by Royer found Chapman leaping musical hurdles left, right and centre, while her mastery of a flashy aria from Handel’s Rinaldo drew audible gasps.
The evening’s pièce de résistance was a LIFEM commission: Roxanna Panufnik’s Tears, no more. Taking Byrd’s arrangement of Dowland’s Flow, my tears and running with it, Panufnik spices up the drooping opening theme with pungent Hindustani modes (themselves a tribute to Chapman’s pioneering recordings of transcriptions of Indian vocal music for harpsichord). A virtuoso performance brought us bang up to date. Kooky, just a bit, but a work full of wit, skill and enchantment.
