Customer Reviews

Royal Lewters: Music of Henry VIII & Elizabeth I's favourite lutenists

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I'm a big fan of Paul O'Dette - I stumbled on vol. 4 of his "Complete Works of John Dowland" in a used record store a while back and have been enchanted with lute music ever since.
The Royal Lewters is a collection of Tudor-era lute music: lots of charming pieces by little-known composers, and for many of the selections the composer isn't known. There is a surprising amount of variety here, many different tempos, moods, etc., everything from cheerful little dance-like tunes to more solemn, introspective pieces and laments. The recorded sound is excellent, nice and spacious.

Reviewing a Paul O'Dette lute recording is a difficult task, because one runs out of superlatives so quickly. This is a CD of music written by (or "thought to have been written by") the court lutenists of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

My only quibble with this CD is that there are almost none of the more familiar English lute pieces heard here, save for Ferrabosco's "Fantasia" and Robert Johnson's setting of "Carman's Whistle". O'Dette's playing is excellent throughout, it is just a shame that the musical compositions themeselves are frequently rather weak. Still, not every English lute player was the equal to Dowland or Cutting, and this CD is a valuable historical document of representative pieces from the lesser musicians. (NB: There is an extended group of works by John Johnson here, a lutenist whom many consider quite highly. For myself, I've never been able to develop a taste for his pieces.)

I believe that this CD and "Robin Hood" are available as a 2-CD set called "Lusty Gallant"; I would recommend the double-disc for a purchase rather than the two individual CDs.

There is no doubt that Dowland is a great composer and that this collection is somewhat miscellaneous. However the performances here are transcendant (as we would expect from Paul O'Dette) and I don't think the pieces are second-rate. I'm no musicologist but I own over 200 cds of music from 1450-1650, a fair amount of it performed on lute, and this is one of my very favorites. I listen to it regularly and in the right mood My Lady Cary's Dompe can bring tears to my eyes.
By the way, the reviewer of August 2005 seems to be mistaken about Royal Lewters being part of the 2-cd set Lusty Gallants. I do not own Lusty Gallants but based on the track listings Amazon provides Robin Hood is indeed (as he says) the 1st disc of that set, but the 2nd disc contains an entirely different selection of lute pieces.

If you like lute music, it doesn't get much better than this CD or this artist. Paul O'Dette is wonderful and the selection of songs is terrific and varied. I highly recommend this CD.