Festival report : PRISMA, first at St Nicholas Church, Beverley, and then PRISMA At The Pub
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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28 May
Festival report : PRISMA in Streets of London, first at St Nicholas Church, Beverley, at 1.00 p.m.
and then PRISMA At The Pub (Monks Walk Inn) at 5.00 p.m. on Saturday 28 May 2022
Hearts on their sleeves, but also frolic and fun
Personnel (alphabetical order) :
* Elisabeth Champollion ~ recorders
* Franciska Hajdu ~ violin, voice
* Soma Salat-Zakariás ~ viola da gamba, voice
* Alon Sariel ~ mandolin, arch-lute
After the early-music pilgrimage from Beverley Minster to St Nicholas Church (following the concert at 11.00 a.m. by Sarbacanes), an unannounced start, with Franciska Hajdu entering, playing her violin, in the opening 'Hornpipe', a number from one of John Playford's collections. Then, moving into the second tune from Playford ['Johnny, Cock thy Beaver'], with Elisabeth Champollion on recorder, bringing – not a little as with Red Priest's Piers Adams – some dance-moves and funky attitude, and 'playing at' Alon Sariel (on mandolin), before a lead-in from Hajdu into the third tune ['Newcastle'], and some more posing and dancing from Champollion.
The first set of tunes was suitably met with very enthusiastic applause, and Champollion told us that PRISMA had been trying to come to play for two years (apparently, as we later learnt in PRISMA At The Pub, originally at a York Christmas Early Music Festival), and swapping 120 e-mails and the like with The National Centre for Early Music. (Arriving in Beverley at 7.00 p.m. the night before (and via York), they had made a tour of 7 or 8 pubs, to try Beverley's ales – although, not unwisely, only going inside three of them, and also stopping at an early enough point.)
Next, in a set of four traditional tunes, the violin was strummed [in 'Trip it upstairs'], and then Hajdu started us with the second tune ['My wife's a wanton wee thing'], duetting with Sariel (now on arch-lute). When Soma Salat-Zakariás, on viola da gamba, joined in with these tunes, the role that he was playing was not a little like that of a drone - though, having said which, all of the players could be heard to vary their style, attack¹ and affect during the concert, according to the needs of the repertoire.
We now had virtuoso spots for, in order, gamba, mandolin, violin and recorder. Of the instrumentalists, Sariel seemed most obviously to be embellishing his line, and, in the next tune², to be improvising to riff with the melody-line of the violin. Again, this lively and fresh playing was valued by the audience at St Nicholas (and, later, at Monks Walk Inn, which was a straight reprise of the morning's concert, but in a more intimate space, where - in addition to hearing #UCFF's laptop fall (when trying to transcribe the review-notes from earlier...) - the members of PRISMA could be seen close to, and adapting to a tighter performance-area).
At PRISMA at The Pub we were treated to an encore, from their newer album Il transilvano
Hajdu started us in the second set of traditional tunes, five in number and beginning with 'Archibald McDonald of Keppoch', which was another in which we heard a drone effect, and with improvisation under the melody-line, when Sariel had swapped instruments for the arch-lute : a number that was very feelingly and tellingly played. Next, a combination of gamba and lute gave us another phlegmatic tune ('Daphne'), before moving into something with spirit as well as sadness, 'The Star of County Down' :
A song in which Salat-Zakariás performed the lead vocal, with all four players standing as we sang the chorus (which, with the invitation to do so, had been printed in our programmes), before, alongside Sariel, we heard Champollion on a lower-pitched recorder, and a different approach with those instruments and the gamba, and then an instrumental section ('Musical Priest' ?). Here, Sariel reverted to mandolin, and Hajdu and Champollion led the way into the final two tunes ('Cooley's Reel' and 'Swallowtail Jig'), with all four members of PRISMA 'playing up' the tunes to conclude the set.
'All in a Garden Green', from Playford, opened with a solo from Salat-Zakariás, whereas - in a contrasting mood in 'Drive the Cold Winter Away', which Playford also gives us - we principally had the sounds of lute and bass (?) recorder, quietly conjuring the season that had just been evoked. Without a pause after these two numbers, and with strong feeling, Hajdu sang 'The Skye Boat-Song'.
Some may have realized that – with the reference to the dead on Culloden field – we were a century on from the nominal London, 1651 stated in our programme-notes : we were back to sadder thoughts and times, with the gamba played pizzicato, and that affect continued in 'Neil Gow's Lament for his second wife', with a subtle gamba drone, and gentle lute and violin, and, last, 'Londonderry Air', sympathetically given on the lute to emotional, but not over-emotional, playing on the gamba.
At the beginning of the last set of Playford tunes (where, with 'Upon A Summer's Day' (and then 'Goddesses'), we were back to warmer climes), and entertaingly using the gestures and facial expressions of mime to give us instructions, Soma Salat-Zakariás sub-divided the audience at St Nicholas, and then further sub-divided the side, to his right³, across the aisle. [He was inviting us, variously, to rub the palms of our hands over each other (in a four-beat pattern, of three longer strokes and one short one), click our fingers (in a two-stroke pattern, alternating our hands), or to perform a third group of percussive actions, which appeared to involve patting the legs and clapping.] This band certainly knows how to party - and to make a party go with a fizz !
By the time of Henry Purcell's scene-evoking 'Hornpipe' Rondeau (from The Fairy-Queen, Z. 629), Hajdu and Champollion were standing alongside each other, and PRISMA began their take on it with viola da gamba and violin – lute and recorder joined in afterwards and took the piece onwards, with Champollion now on a soprano (?) instrument.
Already, as it had been hinted that we 'might' expect – somewhere in this sequence of pieces – some new material (or twinkly mischief ?), momentarily there appeared to be a motivic hint of something afoot, just before we properly landed in what had to be the sound-world of Nicola Matteis (c. 1650 – c. 1714) and his 'Ground after The Scotch Humour' : here, in the sense of a ground bass, with a duet above it.
However, the prepared surprise proved not to be far off, for, almost as soon as we seemed to have started on the second Purcell 'Hornpipe' Rondeau on the programme⁴, PRISMA amusingly launched into something extremely familiar, morphing into a principal theme from the realm of cinema (and a mime of a well-known moment from the film⁵) – the joke and its own humour were very well judged, timed and executed.
After this touch of lightness, we were next given an atmospheric version of the title-track, Ralph McTell's 'Streets of London', with agile and reflective harmonization from Sariel, and with Champollion, on a larger recorder than previously (all of which we might have noticed her chambrée, under her jumper), playing below his line. Mandolin and gamba next gave us a duet in the traditional tune 'Carolan's Draught', before the mood changed, again, in Thomas Ford's vigorous 'Cate of Bardie' [again, as played by PRISMA in their video here].
As she was also to do in PRISMA at The Pub (by now, she had moved back to the other side of the performance-space), Champollion cut the applause short in favour of pressing on with the natural momentum of the programming, and, as she had done near the beginning of the gig, we could see Hajdu strumming her violin, before going back to energetically bowing it. If we had already been in any doubt, the mandolin, in Sariel's hands, was heard to be a very adaptable instrument in the last set of tunes, five traditional ones ['Jenny's Wedding', 'The Sailor's Wife', 'The Green Fields', 'Kerry Reel' and 'Tatter Jack Walsh'].
As a whole, this exciting ensemble is inside all these melodies and their harmonies, and then can obviously so easily and movingly breathe into and bend them, making them infectiously enjoyable !
End-notes :
¹ For example, by the manner of his playing, Sariel could make the mandolin sound more like a guitar.
² Following the tunes, one by one, in a set or four or five started to become more laborious, especially with players in a tradition where weaving the end of one into the start of the next is part of the skill and practice : however, the other tunes listed in the programme were 'The 9th of July' and 'Dusty Window-Sills'.
On which, the chance to repeat the experience, with PRISMA At The Pub, appeared to shed light : part of what Champollion was about, when standing on one leg and holding the other foot forward, now seemed to be signalling an invitation to make such a transition, as Hajdu could be seen in a return of the gesture, just before the ensemble finished its concluding tune.
³ In PRISMA at The Pub, where he gave spoken directions, Salat-Zakariás also joked with us about how his right was our left, physically making the point by turning himself around to face away from us.
⁴ From Abdelazer, Z. T683.
⁵ Without saying which one, it was taken from one of James Cameron's most well-known films – and, again, a touch very reminiscent of Red Priest (who had indeed played at this very Festival a couple of times in the preceding decade).
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
