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Dmitri Hvorostovsky-Arie Antiche  (Phillips)

Remarquable…le theorbe d'Elizabeth Kenny (quelles lecons que ses accompagnements du "Nina" et du "Amarilli mia bella" de Caccini!)
Laurent Campellone, Repertoire des disques compacts, July/August 1998

English Lute songs-with Robin Blaze (Hyperion-for more reviews see their website)

Opening with Johnson's Tempest songs, Blaze and his fine accompanist Elizabeth Kenny, mellifluously shift from the melancholic Dowland to the less ubiquitous songs of William Lawes as they move inexorably towards the great Orpheus, Henry Purcell…around some exquisite solo lute numbers Blaze appears as ever the natural heir to James Bowman…. Another fine achievement from two of Britain's brightest and best.
Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Gramophone, March 2000

The last track, the agonisingly delicious By beauteous softness is a real gem and Blaze treats it accordingly.  When I first heard this I repeated it five times over and was still entranced.  Throughout the recital Elizabeth Kenny complements the voice with taste and sympathy.
Stephen Pettit, Gramophone Early Music, Spring 2000

Elizabeth Kenny is a beguiling accomplice who turns her ear-relieving spots to eminently musical advantage, the Robert Johnson fantasia a particularly plangent oasis.
Paul Riley, Classic CD, March 2000

Move Now with Measured sound-Campion with Robin Blaze
A magical rendering of "Move now with measured sound"…touches deeper emotions as do the exquisitely dreamy "The Cypress curtain of the night" and the tenderly affectionate laments for Prince Henry.  Other highlights include the interplay of Blaze's intoxicatingly moving phrases and the pretty lutenistic embellishments of "Blame not my cheeks"…. Atmospheric instrumental solos and an impressively focussed recording sound complete this superb recital.
Nicholas Rast, BBC Music Magazine, Feb 2002

Robin Blaze ..has every..weapon in his armoury (and)….is again partnered by Elizabeth Kenny, most subtle and imaginative of lute accompanists; her knowledge of the poetry is lightly worn, but informs every note of her playing-she seems to think words and music on a dual track, and her ornamentation is magically judged-always for strengthening the rhetoric, never for display.  Her sleeve note is without reservation the best I've ever read…. The disc…is an absolute joy to listen to.
Jilly Spencer, Lute News, Spring 2002

Soloists of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Queen Elizabeth Hall, February 2002
…. the continuo parts were so variously realised, ranging from the luxurious resonance of David Watkin's cello, Paul Nicholson's harpsichord and Elizabeth Kenny's theorbo, in the opening trio sonata…. to the enchantment of just harpsichord and theorbo… 
Bayan Northcott, The Independent, Feb 27 2002

Song recital with Robin Blaze and others, Wigmore Hall, London

PHYSICIAN, LITERARY polemicist, musical theorist Latin versifier and deviser of masques, Thomas Campion (1567-1620) was, of course, pre-eminently a poet-composer, every one of whose 120-odd lute songs comprised a setting of his own words. True, he had firm views as to which art should take precedence. While his lyrics stand among the most polished and poignant of the Elizabethan era and were set by many other composers, his melodies, certainly memorable at best, tend to be straightforwardly supportive, with accompaniments that exclude the kind of introspective counterpoint favoured by his great contemporary John Dowland. 

Or so they appear from Campion's own publications, though as the accomplished young lutenist Elizabeth Kenny argued in the programme book for this concert, players of the time would undoubtedly have used his chord sequences more richly, perhaps also improvising introductions to the tunes, or interposing divisions (variations) upon them, Nor was Campion himself averse to his accompaniments being shared out between several players, and the combination of Kenny, Mark Levy on the sonorously chordal lyra viol and the bass viol of Joanna Levine on Saturday often sounded exquisite. 

But then they did have the radiantly unforced young counter-tenor voice of Robin Blaze to support; phrasing with supple vivacity in lighter numbers such as 'It Fell on a Summer's Day," bringing an urgent sweep to more passionate songs such as "Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!" and rounding out his wide-ranging selection with a "Never Weather-Beaten Sail" of such touching simplicity as to send one straight out to pick up his new Campion, CD. Although the songs were nicely interspersed by such instrumental items as dance tunes from the masques and a chromatic lute fantasia by Campion's composer friend Philip Rosseter, one felt the tireless Blaze could easily have held the stage in his own right the entire evening. 

In fact the programme encompassed two further elements: a sequence of slightly over-the-top readings by the actor Gabriel Woolf extracts from Campion's treatises and contemporary historical documents to "put us in the picture", and a new setting of a sequence from Campion's text of "The Lord's Masque" by the young British composer Rachel Stott, including a modest part for herself on the viola. This was put together in an attractive cut-and paste manner on characteristic Jacobean melodic turns and rhythms but centred on a mesmeric setting of the lyric "Advance your choral motions now" exploiting lute and viol harmonies that was rightly encored.
Bayan Northcott, The Independent, November 14, 2001

Dido and Aeneas/Actéon, Barbican Centre, London


(click on the picture for a large image)

It would be hard to find a greater contrast to Aida [reviewed earlier] than Les Arts Florissants' semi-staged Charpentier and Purcell double bill at the Barbican; single strings, a few chairs and a scarlet veil for props, gestures that straddled communicative immediacy and the language of baroque dance, a band who were at the heart of the staging, and the kind of dramatically-aware music- making that drew an audience of 2,000 people to rapt silence as they listened to a single baroque guitar softly extemporising the chords of Purcell's sinewy, seductive dances. 

 It's not merely a signal of the inevitable heartache between two ill-suited (ill- fated) lovers. The storm springs directly from the innocent invocation of the myth of Actéon and Diana, which (in this performance) springs in turn from the extemporized guitar.

 The continuo section – William Christie on harpsichord, guitar/theorbo player Elizabeth Kenny, and assorted viols and bass violins – gave a rich, delicately nuanced carpet of sound on which the stories unfolded.

 I find this music's unique balance of artifice and sensuality utterly intoxicating. To see it performed so apparently effortlessly was like being in seventh heaven.
Anna Picard, Independent on Sunday, March 4, 2001

Opera - David Benedict is seduced by the thrilling exoticism of a scantily clad queen of the Nile

From its premiere in 1724, Handel's Giulio Cesare was a runaway hit. Watching Glyndebourne Festival Opera's astonishing new production, it becomes blisteringly clear why it is regarded as the composer's operatic masterpiece. Giulio Cesare is not so much a box of delights as an embarrassment of riches.

Valuables, however, need looking after. Bad productions have made this opera look long-winded and lacklustre. At Glyndebourne, David McVicar makes almost four hours of musical theatre glow.

McVicar's production emphasises the lighter, more self-conscious side of Handel's opera. Lissom Danielle de Niese's Cleopatra dances several of her arias as well as she sings them. This is Cleopatra asuberminx. Before anyone gets hot and bothered about the queen of the Nile disporting herself in such skimpy wardrobe items as Brigitte Reiffenstuel's see-through, rhinestone-studded little black cocktail number, bear in mind that, for Caesar, Cleopatra represents sexual exoticism par excellence.

The emphasis on eroticism and irony is indicative of McVicar's adherence to emotional reality rather than dully dutiful literal reality. In fact, the fast-and-loose humour of Andrew George's knowing, coquettish choreography reinforces an underlying sense of seriousness. The production is unified by a deep respect for the score, as is evident from William Christie's startling conducting of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Christie encourages a wealth of individual colours from baroque recorders and other, more arcane original instruments such as the theorbo: an enormous, double-headed lute with a thrillingly resonant, woody tone (here played to vivid effect by Elizabeth Kenny). You begin to suspect that the blandness of modern instruments is one of the reasons why Handel languished in obscurity for so long. Christie's great strength is his dedication to drama. When Caesar rages at being presented with Pompey's severed head, the conductor whips up true fury from scurrying strings. In "Va tacito", Caesar's aria about waiting for the moment, the strings emphasise the steady beat of time before slowing to a climactic, sustained blast from the solo horn expressing Caesar's resolute intent.

McVicar complements Christie's dramatic sensitivity with the musicality of his production. On Robert Jones's beautifully ordered Edwardian-era, Raj-style set, first-rate singers completely inhabit both text and score. Not everyone is ideally cast - Christopher Maltman's voice is not quite low enough for the general Achilla - but McVicar nevertheless manages to inspire exhilarating conviction in his singers.

Despite his eight solo arias, Caesar (a part originally written for a castrato) is usually the hardest role to flesh out. Yet Sarah Connolly effortlessly oozes authority. Her second-act duet with an on-stage violin, "Se in fiorito", rises above merely dazzling singing to an expression of Caesar's sly sense of humour. Hell, she even whistles a couple of bars.

Listening to her hushed, floated top notes, you realise Handel loved singers and wrote unusually well for them. Yet the strength of this production lies in its spurning of empty, audience-pleasing vocal pyrotechnics.

Take the frankly ravishing duet where the despairing Cornelia and Sesto, in fear for their lives, mourn the death of Pompey. The lighting designer Paule Constable bathes them in a tight pool of light, which contrasts with the waves of the Nile glinting in the moonlight. With such dramatic staging, a lesser production would have gone for heart-on-sleeve emoting in the couple's spine-melting falling phrases. But Patricia Bardon and Angelika Kirchschlager pull back on the sound, singing so quietly that they seem to draw us inside the music. The spellbinding effect recalls the observation of Yip Harburg, co-writer of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow": "Words make you think thoughts, music makes you feel a feeling, but a song makes you feel a thought."

McVicar's production gives a much-needed lift to Glyndebourne's season after Peter Hall's lamentably half-baked opener La Cenerentola. Londoners can catch the musical glories of Giulio Cesare when it comes to the Proms on 23 August - although, robbed of its theatricality, that's only half the story.

Giulio Cesare is at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Lewes, East Sussex (01273 813 813) until 20 August

This article first appeared in the New Statesman. For the latest in current and cultural affairs subscribe to the New Statesman print edition.