On track: Secret music and musical snapshots

By WILLIAM DART

The dangerous graces on Musica Secreta's new CD, Dangerous Graces, are amazing. Here is an album that might seem dauntingly obscure, featuring a specialist Early Music group who perform works created by women composers and performers in the late 16th century.

All in all, a project with the potential to be as dry as parchment, but there's no shortage of passion here. Deborah Roberts and her colleagues, assisted by some male instrumentalists and an obliging bass, have workshopped the music to render it more song-like and lyrical.

Instead of having to cope with dense, learned five-part counterpart, we are given just one or a few lines, floating above a filigree of harp, lute and viol.

The most extensive track is a spine-tingling, 10-minute cantata, "Qual musico gentil" by Giaches de Wert, featuring Emily Van Evera, the American soprano who recently was a spellbinding Dido for Andrew Parrott and the Taverner Consort. Most of the tracks are less ambitious, such as Luzzaschi's Deh non cantar, which Catherine King and Mary Nicholas transform into an almost unbearably poignant duet.

The women's voices lull and swell with effortless grace as they explore the soulful and yearning images of these madrigals: "There is not a dense enough veil," they sing, "even if mountains were imposed on mountains, that could make hidden and distant those lovely eyes."

And, take my word for it, this recording will inspire the same sense of devotion in anyone who listens to even one track.

Viva Voce is a far cry from Musica Secreta; the Auckland group is firmly, even blatantly populist with its hip stage presentations and conceptualised programmes (a week ago, in the Town Hall concert chamber, the theme was vocalised versions of instrumental classics).

There's some of that repertoire on their Snapshots album - a thrilling Strauss Zarathustra alongside lesser frolics like Albert Hammond's I'm a train and I do like to be beside the seaside which are more than a little too cute for their own good.

The occasional squalls (both Zarathustra and Barber's Agnus Dei have a few anguished pangs) are balanced by the luxuriant harmonies of Vaughan Williams' Cloud-Capp'd Towers and the sprightly rhythms of Byrd's Though Amaryllis Dance.

A breathtaking (and risk-taking) pause in the Agnus Dei reveals the fine musicianly instinct of conductor John Rosser.

There are some local "snapshots" too, among the Monteverdi and Debussy, including David Hamilton's splendid Three Spirituals and As Long as Time by Dunedin composer Anthony Ritchie.

These settings of Cilla McQueen, Rachel McAlpine and Sam Hunt nod to Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson but still manage to be as Kiwi as a pie from the local dairy.

* Musica Secreta, Dangerous Graces (Linn CKD 169); Viva Voce, Snapshots (Viva Voce ACD 901)