Presto Editor's Choice
April 2023

Gramophone Magazine
July 2023
Editor's Choice

Alexander Chance (counter-tenor), Toby Carr (lute)

Dowland: Can she excuse my wrongs? (First Booke of Songes, 1597)
Dowland: Praeludium
Dowland: I saw my Lady weepe
Dowland: Flow my teares (Lacrimæ)
Dowland: Captain Digorie Pipers Galliard
Campion: I care not for these ladies
Campion: The cypress curtain of the night
Campion: Never weather-beaten sail
Dowland: Mignarda
Ford, T: What then is love sings Coridon
Ford, T: Faire, sweet, cruell
Danyel: Pavan
Danyel: Mrs M E her funeral tears for the death of her husband
Danyel: He whose desires are still abroad
Dowland: In darkness let me dwell
Lully: Entrée d'Apollon
Purcell: O solitude, my sweetest choice, Z406
Visée: Prélude
Purcell: An Evening Hymn 'Now that the sun hath veiled his light', Z193

Named Gramophone’s One to Watch and winner of the 2022 International Handel Singing Competition, Alexander Chance makes his recording debut on Linn. Drop not, mine eyes is a recital of English lute songs that soaks up the zeitgeist of the past couple of years to create a programme full of melancholic works by Dowland, Campion, Danyel, Purcell and others. If the ever-popular Dowland was readily prone to sadness, as exemplified by the pair I saw my lady weep and Flow, my tears, or indeed In darkness let me dwell, the polymath Thomas Campion favoured a more sober style, as shown in I care not for these ladies. Thomas Ford displays his more profane side here with Fair, sweet, cruel and What then is love. When it comes to melancholy, John Danyel’s Grief, keep within and Drop not, mine eyes are every bit as good as Dowland. The programme closes with Purcell, the other English Orpheus. Toby Carr provides sympathetic accompaniment on lute and theorbo.

"Chance’s tone is pellucid; notes fall round and clear as water drops...a recording in which Chance stakes serious claim to the title of his generation’s most exciting British countertenor." - Gramophone Magazine, July 2023.