Gramophone Magazine
October 2020
Editor's Choice

Bor Zuljan (lute)

1. A Fantasia, P71
2. A Dream
3. A Fancy, P73
4. Can She Excuse, P42 - The Right Honourable Robert, Earl of Essex, His Galliard, P42a
5. Preludium, P98
6. A Fancy, P5
7. Lachrimæ, P15
8. Forlorn Hope Fancy, P2
9. Galliard to Lachrimæ, P46
10. A Fancy, P6
11. Monsieur's Almain
12. A Fantasie, P1a
13. Lady Clifton's Spirit
14. Lady Hunsdon's Puffe
15. Sir John Smith, His Almain, P47
16. Fortune My Foe
17. A Fancy, P7
18. Farewell Fancy

The first notes of the descending chromatic theme break the silence and it seems as if time has stopped. The listener is drawn into the world of John Dowland, the greatest lutenist of all, in a journey through multiple shades of melancholy and lucent hope. Never before had the lute sounded as expressive and colourful as in these masterful Fancies, as dynamic as in these sparkling dances: Renaissance lute music here reached its summit. Bor Zuljan explores these qualities in his debut solo recording, breathing new life into Dowland's masterpieces.

"This is an original, improvisatory yet often deeply introspective recital, masterfully curated, mainly of Dowland’s fantasias for solo lute, ‘remarkable masterpieces of counterpoint, rhetoric, architecture and virtuosity’… has any [recording] so accurately captured our flawed selves in this distorting infinity mirror hall of Renaissance counterpoint and variations on songs and dances which Dowland himself distorted through endless improvisation?" - Gramophone Magazine, October 2020.