Notes on Camerata Trajectina

Sunday night, the Dutch music consort Camerata Trajectina performed at the National Gallery, with a repertoire of popular Dutch songs from the 17th Century. It was a lovely evening of early music, both sacred and secular, instrumental and vocal, with majestic performances from Saskia Coolen’s recorders, Louis Peter Grijp’s lute and cittern, and the surprisingly versatile — and whimsical — tenor voice of Bernard Loonen. I must make special mention of Saskia Coolen: she is one of those rare recorderists who brings out an unprecedented power and clarity one hardly expects from such a small, humble instrument; so much so that it brought tears to my eyes.

I could write on and on about the rapturous polyphonies of the evening, but instead of exhausting my vocabulary of superlatives, I’ll let you enjoy browsing the raw, cluttered notes I was taking in the programme. Just click on the image below to see the full spread:

Camerata Trajectina programme notes

(105KB JPG image. The arrows indicate changes in the sequence, and “vdg” stands for viola de gamba.)

Comments

  1. Phisch says:

    I have a one year old who plays the recorder. He brings tears to our eyes when he plays, too, but that’s because it’s too hilarious. I’d love to hear the recorder played well. The best I’ve heard is music class, and that’s not saying much.