Duncan Gardiner (guitar) and friends

TPT: 54’ 00”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

Excellent diction and a plaintive melody line from Lucinda Rae with steady guitar chords and Louise McKay’s gentle  cello musings make Gardiner’s Incense and Arabie a splendid opening track.

 

An arrangement of Greensleeves, that timeless Tudor evergreen, is given most sensitive treatment, too, in a performance blissfully free of the extraneous noises – squeaks, clanks, creaks – that so often bedevil the playing of lesser musicians. And in My Song (for you), composer/guitarist Gardiner gives us a gently melancholy, restful utterance.

 

Gardiner’s Peridot Suite for piano is played, beautifully, by Faith Maydwell in a performance which comes across in turn wistful, yearning and melancholy as if heard, rather delightfully, on a fine quality musical box.

 

Gardiner also plays his Tears All Around, music that’s informed by a gentle sadness.

 

Cradled in Time and Space places violinist Lena Bennett firmly in the spotlight. She  plays most expressively in synchronisation with Gardiner’s perfectly pitched, arpeggionated accompaniment.

 

In And so the Peacock Cried, we listen to the versatile Gardiner playing on recorder; it has a haunting quality.

 

There is much else in a delightfully laidback presentation. Bravo