Renaissance

Renaissance keyboard works, normally composed for the harpsichord, clavichord or organ, have always sounded fantastic on the piano, due to the instrument’s clarity of line and expressive potential. But they do require a player familiar with the music’s stylistic quirks, particularly when it comes to ornamentation, which was often unique to its country of origin. Shani Diluka is our passionate and knowledgable guide to this lesser-played repertoire, but while she’s faithful to its written score, she communicates each piece through a modern lens. The results are startlingly beautiful, as if revealing anew the colours of a faded oil painting. The modal beauty of William Byrd’s The Earle of Salisbury Pavan and John Dowland’s My Lord Willoughby’s Welcome Home are enhanced by both the sweetness of the piano tone and by its modern tuning, which together smooth out keys changes that once would have intentionally jarred the ear. By juxtaposing music by contemporaneous Italian composers, Diluka shows the extent to which composers passed ideas back and forth across borders. The programme moves away from the Renaissance towards the Baroque, with music of a more stately, elegant variety by Handel and Domenico Scarlatti via Purcell. Diluka brings more of the piano’s expressiveness to bear on this later music, lavishing it with an alluring quasi-Romantic sheen. A handful of Diluka’s own arrangements add moments of calm beauty.