CROSSING
(Romero/Newmarket)
9.5/10
Out of the constant deluge of new music bursts an expected vision of beauty to rival Joseph Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne. Part bucolic dream and part sonic rainbow (arching from the 13th century to now), this has guitarist Julian Curwin and soprano Jane Sheldon composing settings for assorted French, Spanish and English poetry of lost or unrequited love. The 14th-century Chanson d’amour and La froidor, for instance, impale you on the anguish of love unrequited, made all the more poignant by the bell-like, boy-soprano purity and innocence of Sheldon’s voice against Curwin’s classical guitar.
The title track and El Sol both have otherworldly wordless singing, with the former deploying an exotic counter melody and ghostly electric guitar, laced with viola (Shenton Gregory) and percussion (Jess Ciampa), who also deftly colour other pieces. Rimbaud’s Ophelia, surely one of the greatest pieces of Shakespeare-inspired poetry, now floats in musical pathos, and the one song in English, Unseen, Unknown, is by the Shakespeare contemporary Mary Wroth. The music, gently bathing in the prevailing medieval ethos without descending to pastiche, is performed with an artistic rigour worthy of Jordi Savall. I know no higher praise.