The annual Tudor Pull is one of the quirky traditions that London keeps yielding up if you look for them. Every year – except 2020, of course – the Queen’s rowbarge Gloriana, full of costumed oarsmen and carrying someone dressed as Henry VIII, sets off with a flotilla of smaller boats from Hampton Court to the Tower of London. That’s the inspiration for John Paul Jones’s new piece for the viol consort Fretwork, premiered in the livestreamed (from St Michael and All Angels, Blackheath) opening concert of this year’s London international festival of early music (LIFEM).
Jones, who will always be best known as the bassist in Led Zeppelin, now has a list of musical collaborators, from Dave Grohl to John Potter – and The Tudor Pull draws on an eclectic stylistic range over its three-movement, 10-minute span. The music is richly woven between the players, the opening statement from the bass viols kicking off a dialogue in which we hear hints of the Morris-style tune that will dominate the finale. The middle movement is evocative simultaneously of the easily flowing river and the colossal effort of rowing on it, the upper viols moving in parallel over a heavy plucked bass line, with angular solos that sound deliberately awkward. The Tudor Pull might briefly recall Eric Clapton and Layla in its opening moments, but it owes more to the sensibilities of such 20th-century English revivalist composers as Peter Warlock. Jones doesn’t try to recreate a Tudor sound-world, but he writes idiosyncratically and unselfconsciously for viols, and the piece works: it’s just new enough.
The programme otherwise was half Tudor, half Arvo Pärt. The players sounded hypnotic in both Pärt’s Summa and in his Fratres, the latter slightly marred by uncharacteristic imprecision in its percussive chords. The Tudor works, by Tye, Holborne, Bull and Lupo, unfolded entirely beautifully, the highlight being John Bull’s In Nomine in 11/4, its harmonies grinding together with glorious friction.
• Available on demand at LIFEM.org or at Marquee.tv until 11 December.
