MUSIC REVIEW : Swanne Alley Charms Audience at Caltech

Its six members doing multiple duty on a variety of instruments--bowed, plucked, blown--the Musicians of Swanne Alley succeeded to an astonishing degree on Sunday in creating a feeling of intimacy in the acoustically uninviting spaces of Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium.

A small, appreciative audience seemed reluctant to leave even after a longish (by the clock) program and a rowdy encore: a pastiche starring a country fiddling-and-singing Red Priest backed by a consort from hell including twangers (lutenists, in fact) exhaustively trained in Nashville, at the Royal Academy of Tablature (RAT) and in a Russian nightclub.

The printed agenda of 16th-Century English music proved more sane if hardly less entertaining, opening with the anonymous “Some Years of Late in ‘88,” a comic take on the sinking of the Armada, delivered by Emily Van Evera with delectably leaden disingenuousness in a sweet, finely tuned soprano.

“Wilson’s Wilde” (also anon.) exhibited the consort’s blended, lively style, focusing on David Douglass’ fiddle and the easy command of Paul O’Dette, co-director--with fellow lutenist Lyle Nordstrom--of the expert ensemble.

For these ears, the afternoon’s centerpiece was the boldly theatrical “Hero and Leander” by Nicolas Lanier, its free-form recitative achieving a dark, Monteverdi-like expressivity in the presentation by Van Evera.