BWW Reviews: Philadelphia's Piffaro Scores A Hit With Its PRISONERS AND PENITENTS Season Close

From Friday, May 16 through Sunday May 18, Piffaro presented its final concerts of the current season, this set entitled "Prisoners and Penitents". The Friday concerts were held, fittingly, at Eastern State Penitentiary, and the others at their usual locations in Chestnut Hill and Wilmington. Although Eastern State wasn't built for acoustics, the themed location is clearly appropriate, and it would be nice if Piffaro and other musical groups in the area were able to tailor settings in that fashion more often.

But, to the music itself. The soloist for this concert, rather than being an instrumentalist, was mezzo Maren Montalbano, who performs with Opera Philadelphia's ensemble as well as with other vocal music organizations and ensembles. Her warm, rich bel canto lent an interesting interpretation to the heavily vocal program, filled with English ballads of not-so-many-saints and sinners, ranging from the political to the pickpocket. Piffaro member Grant Herreid, normally on lute, provided the male voice necessary for several duets. But it was Montalbano's voice that ruled the evening.

On Saturday night in Chestnut Hill, the prelude began in the choir loft, all instrumental, with winds, brass, and strong percussion moving into stately semitonal minor key pieces winding up with dark, droning pipes. That led into the processional, the Elizabethan "Fortune my Foe," with pipes, percussion, and Miss Montalbano's exquisite voice proceeding to the front of the church. The tune and words became the motif for the rest of the concert, and were returned to frequently, but this particular arrangement, with its "dead man walking" beat, was a vocal and instrumental danse macabre; the infamous twentieth century Hungarian jazz piece, "Gloomy Sunday," is positively cheery next to this particular arrangement of the Elizabethan ballad. The performance was as gloomy, indeed, as a piece of music gets, but perfectly executed in that gloom.

A set on the prisoners of the Tower of London was primarily vocal, including two works attributed to Anne Boylen, "Defiled is my name" and "O Death, rock me asleep." On the latter, Montalbano's voice was practically ethereal throughout the first verse, then pure force in the second. "Essex' Last Goodnight," a ballad about the execution of Elizabeth's favorite courtier, the Earl of Essex, was sung with a backup trio of harp, lute, and flute. Montalbano's delivery was again stunning; if one were to invoke a musical theatre comparison, her performance had the same staunchness to it that one finds in Little Edie's character in the musical "Grey Gardens", a chin-up defiance of circumstance, in this case the scaffold awaiting him. Both vocally and physically, Montalbano is as fine an actor as she is a singer. The set ended with an instrumental of "Fortune my Foe," this time a dirge in brass and woodwind, led by the sackbut.

The most amusing set by far was "Crimes and Criminals," which provided three variants of the broadside ballad "Jack Williams," one sung by Grant Herreid, and the pavan and the galliard purely instrumental. Though it's a sailor's song, its theme is reminiscent of the well-known later Irish song, "The Black Velvet Band," about winding up in prison thanks to a woman who proved the singer's undoing. The second ballad, "A Caveat for Cutpurses," is actually a lyric by Ben Jonson to a popular Elizabethan tune, followed with a courante of the tune, "Packington's Pound," arranged by Praetorius - the tune was popular enough to have reached Germany at that time.

A set on "Penitents and Penitence" began with a woodwind "Ane Lessone upon the Second Psalme" from the period, followed by two John Dowland compositions and two instrumentals. The two Dowling pieces, "An Heart That's Broken and Contrite," and "All ye whom love or fortune," were performed by Montalbano with lute, the former with harp and woodwinds as well.

The theme of "Fortune my Foe" returned in the "Traitors and Treachery" set. The two-part "The Complaint of Ulallia/The Lamentation of George Strangwidge", two songs merged into one dialogue, sung by Montalbano and Herreid, was set to the tune of "Fortune my Foe," as indeed many sixteenth century English lyrics were. A fantasia on the theme followed, performed by woods and strings with nearly-Baroque embellishments. The second half of the set was to the also-frequently-used tune of "Greensleeves" (so common for setting lyrics that Shakespeare commented on it in "The Merry Wives of Windsor") - "A Warning to all False Traitors", a nicely-acted vocal piece by Montalbano, and an instrumental of the tune following,

The recessional, which was not surprisingly once again "Fortune my Foe," began with the pipes-and-drumbeat dirge, but moved to a more lively, near-dancelike arrangement for brass and winds. Piffaro's variations of the song throughout the concert were neatly wrapped up with the recessional.

Montalbano has previously performed only once with Piffaro, but had enjoyed it: "I've been friends with them; I called Joan up and reminded her. I love to sink my teeth into this sort of thing! I love to research, and in my last piece [A Warning to Traitors], every name is someone who was executed for being a Catholic. It's singing actual history. I love it!"

The heavily thematic concert was nearly as well-suited to a church as to a prison, though perhaps an old Episcopal church would have felt more "English". But the material and performers were particularly nicely matched, and the concentration on English music of the theme especially satisfactory. Although the combination of material and setting might seem most at home for a late night All Hallows/All Souls concert, it was not required to be both moving and enjoyable. In many ways the thematic content, the heavy use of vocals (particularly with a singer of Montalbano's talent) and the historical as well as linguistic accessibility of the all-English music program makes this program far more comprehensible to non-initiates of early music than many others would be. People are familiar to some degree with Henry VIII (Anne Boylen) and Elizabeth, as well as with the Tower, and of course with the tune "Greensleeves". This is the sort of program that makes an excellent introduction to early music for people who generally think the idea is inaccessible or uninteresting. Piffaro has hit a musical home-run with this program and production.

For more information on Piffaro and on its upcoming season, visit www.piffaro.org.

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