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Alix Goolden Performance Hall
January 23, 2010
"But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues / You can tell by the way she smiles."
Bob Dylan was not the first, nor will he be the last great artist (and no, I'm not including Dan Brown) to be fascinated and inspired by the enigmatic expression on Leonardo da Vinci's most famously iconic image, or by its creator.
Mona was one of the three large reproductions which provided the backdrop for Saturday night's wonderful evocation of Leonardo's life by the Toronto Consort. The other two were Lorenzo de Medici and what I fondly imagined should have been entitled "Woman with Weasel", although it actually turned out to be a portrait of someone whose name I didn't quite catch, holding an ermine. (Weasel, ermine, you say potato, I say tomato.)
We are all familiar with Leonardo the painter and inventor but I imagine that, for most of us, the notion of Leonardo the singer and musician is a new one.
Unfortunately, although we have written testimony to his prowess as an improviser and versifier, there seem to be no extant examples of his own music (assuming he actually wrote anything down) and so the programme had to content itself with music of Leonardo's contemporaries; music which he may well have known, even sung or played himself.
Neatly held together by readings and quotations (mainly from Vasari's Life and Leonardo's own writings), superbly characterised by David Fallis, the music itself was almost as wide-ranging as the great man's talents and interests.
The vocal and instrumental combinations, too, were many and varied, with every one of the nine-member consort (by Early Music standards virtually a "chorus and orchestra") taking the limelight in turn, a procedure which triumphantly demonstrated that the Toronto Consort is emphatically an ensemble of equals: one could write an entire essay on Alison Melville's wonderfully characterised recorder playing, or Ben Grossman's astonishing mastery of the hurdy-gurdy - revealing unexpected hidden depths to the instrument - or, indeed, any of the other musicians.
Given that there were 24 individual items and that every one of them was pure delight, it is difficult (although I shall manfully attempt the task) to select a handful to stand for them all.
After the two pieces which went under the rubric "Prologue" - a jolly little instrumental pavan by Joan Amrosio Dalza, whose vivacity was an augur for the entire evening and a lovely anonymous vocal piece - it was the "Birth" music, "Vieni, vieni" using anonymous nativity melodies, which knocked this listener sideways.
Katherine Hill, briefly abandoning the viola da gamba, sang with a natural, unpretentious tone to the accompaniment of recorder and hurdy-gurdy. While all three had marvellous solo music, when they came together, the resulting counterpoint was quite overwhelmingly beautiful. It was one of those blissful moments which occasionally occur in the concert hall, when one feels that life cannot possibly offer anything finer.
According to Vasari, Leonardo kept Mona Lisa entertained during her lengthy sittings (wouldn't a quick Polaroid have sufficed?) by having music performed for her.
For the next group of pieces, soprano Michele DeBoer brought her chair to the front of the stage and sat, smiling enigmatically. A simple piece of theatre which proved surprisingly effective, although she did eventually join the others for the first half's finale, "Hor vendut'ho la speranza", which employed, for I think the first time in the evening and to wonderful effect, the entire ensemble.
The second half opened with The Carnival in Florence. "Lirum, bililirum" - sung by Arlecchino, in the Bergamo dialect - enabled Hill to display the more histrionic side of her vocal talents and "Noi l'amazone siamo" ("We are the Amazons") had nothing to do with online book-buying, but featured the three women singing what almost amounts to an early proto-feminist tract - albeit one with a humourous edge. But which man would not be tempted by such gorgeous singing?
The final group (Last Days) was, of necessity more sombre than much of what had preceded it: for example the austere beauty of "Viva Christo e chi li crede", in which Laura Pudwell's voice was joined, one at a time, by the others.
The final piece - "Son restato sempre mai" (Now I am always in pain, sorrow and woe) - however, after a slow introduction on recorder and lute, accelerated into another tout ensemble which was far more cheerful and lively than its text would have led one to suppose.
Throughout the evening and its many shifts of mood, the Toronto Consort played and sang with an unobtrusive and effortless virtuosity, bringing the music to life and sweeping the audience back into Renaissance Italy.
The perfect antidote to the winter blues.
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