Mark Levy, director of Concordia, makes a point of inviting distinguished artists such as Laurence Dreyfus, and now John Holloway and Gary Cooper, to appear with his consort of viols. Certainly John Holloway brings eloquence and spirit to these performances, but Gary Cooper is the hero of the CD, perfectly shadowing Rachel Platt’s narrative singing in Urania to Parthenissa and enriching her interpretations of the other Locke songs, and then emerging as the accomplished, poised soloist in the harpsichord and organ pieces.
Locke’s music has fared very well of late, with previous Auvidis recordings of the consort music by Pierre Hantai’s Concert Francais and Jordi Savall’s Hesperion XX. The organ voluntaries have been recorded elsewhere, principally by John Butt (Harmonia Mundi, 6/94) and Robert Woolley (Chandos, 9/94), and should be compared with these new versions. The Parley of Instruments’ recording of Locke’s orchestral music (Hyperion, 6/94), readers may recall, was honoured in the Gramophone “Critics’ choice” column of 1994. Pride of place in this disc must go jointly to Cooper’s virtuoso performance of the Harpsichord Suite in C, for the colours, resonance and command of complex textures, rhythms and ornamentation, and Concordia’s of the sixth suite “ffor seaverall ffriends” which is framed by the rhetorical Pavan and the cryptic Jigg with its closing benediction, enhanced as elsewhere by Cooper.
A number of Locke’s works appear uniquely on this CD, which will lend it interest for those with a passion for seventeenth-century English music.'