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Phantasm - Ward: Consort music for five and six viols - Classic FM Magazine

Viol consort Phantasm performs fantasias in five or six parts by English composer John Ward (1589 - 1638) who wrote little else. The works summon the dancing gaiety as well as the dark, wood-panelled domesticity of Jacobean London; these were for the growing home-entertainment market. Phantasm plays with a slight expressive whine and delicate balance. There is a lightness in the musicians' bows that betrays the communal pleasure of performance and jaunty phrasing in the three fantasias built on Italian songs. The three In Nomines are more serious, the imitations now in agreement rather than the pass-the-parcel exuberance of some of the fantasias.

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Classic FM Magazine
05 November 2009