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To celebrate their thirtieth birthday, Ensemble Daedalus has offered us something unique, deeply and powerfully charming. In a wide ranging autobiographical narrative, R. Festa tells us in simple and moving words his « Story of trains and the sea ».

 

This confession is extended by the music now touching, now festive, and sweetly haunting. A startling bouquet of « mauresques » illustrates, in one way, the career of Daedalus: that of musician adventurers who set off to explore unfairly forgotten territory, left on the edge of History.

 

From the beginning, Daedalus has revived a mass of anonymous or forgotten composers, minor musical forms, often neglected by modern eyes who saw only trifles: R Festa manages to find unsuspected treasures, is sensitive to their quiet but fascinating beauty.

 

He couldn't have offered us a finer birthday present than this anthology of renaissance italian carnaval songs. We discover how the morescas, those warlike dances, metamorphosed into sweet napolitan love songs.

 

This program is full of charm and spirit: from the clockwork vocation of the lover's wayward heart in St’amaro core mio, , to the sounds of crows in winter, compared to the words of an unfaithful lover, in Tu sai che la cornacchia.

 

R Festa has an undeniable gift for marrying the talents of musicians of diverse origins: from the North( soprano M Mauch, and lutenist Hugh Sandilands) to the Mediterranean (Josep Benet and Josep Cabré from Catalonia, most of the others from Italy).

 

Above all, what a pleasure to hear M Beasley again in the repertoire he does best. The colour of his charming tenor voice comes into its own in these humble neapolitan tunes. Quite naturally, he sings straight to our hearts. His amazing Vorria che fosse ciaola, a anonymous villota, so simple and so deep, sums up the art of Daedalus.  Viva felice !

 

 

Dénis Morrier, Diapason 2017