(from left) Alasdair Middleton, Jonathan Dove, Philippe Sly & Sacconi Quartet at recording session
Review by Robert Hugill
ON THE STREETS AND IN THE SKY: WORKS BY JONATHAN DOVE
Sacconi Quartet, Philippe Sly (baritone vocal); Charles Owen & Katya Apekisheva (pianos)
Signum Classics
On the streets and in the sky on Signum Classics features a selection of works by Jonathan Dove with the song cycle Who Wrote the Book of Love? at its center, performed by baritone Philippe Sly and the Sacconi Quartet, with the Sacconi Quartet also playing Dove’s quartet On the streets and in the sky and Vanishing Gold, with the piano duo Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva featured on Between Friends.
In fact, the album could easily have been called Between Friends as it celebrates friendships and collaborations. Both Charles Owen and the Sacconi Quartet have recorded Dove’s music before, on Signum’s disc In Damascus [see my review], and the music on this disc creates an extended network of close links.
‘Who Wrote the Book of Love?’: VI. Gallant Love, Sacconi Quartet, Philippe Sly (vocal), from On the street and in the sky: Works by Jonathan Dove
Dove’s second string quartet, On the streets and in the sky, was commissioned by the Sacconi Quartet to celebrate their 20th anniversary. Dove’s writing of it arose during the pandemic and its music reflects the strangeness and intensity of that time. “Driving” begins with a familiar Dove-like regular train rhythm yet it is imbued with anxiety that, as the rhythms become disconnected, become more violent, yet the movement ends in an eerie silence. “Lively” opens with a remarkable evocation of diverse birdsong, overlaying to create a texture through which threads a singing cello. Yet this too quietens and evaporates into something more lyrical and thoughtful. “Very gently moving” continues the mood, interior with time suspended. Though things get more intense, the movement gradually unwinds to a magical close.
‘Who Wrote the Book of Love?’: XIV. Folk Love, Sacconi Quartet, Philippe Sly (vocal), from On the street and in the sky: Works by Jonathan Dove
Dove wrote Between Friends for the 2019 London Piano Festival to be played by the festival’s artistic directors, Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva. It celebrates Dove’s friendship with Graeme Mitchinson, who died in 2018 and with whom Dove would play at Mitchinson’s two pianos. The movements are called Conversations, each with a different marking, “Gently moving,” “Dancing,” “Spacious,” “Lively and playful, with mischief.”
The first is short, a gradual build from nothing to a grand pianistic gesture. The second shimmers with suppressed, rhythmic excitement with some really effective use of the two pianos to create even more excitement. The third is quiet, the suspended harmonies developing into strong chords but finally evaporating. The last conversation is fast and quicksilver.
Dove first met French-Canadian baritone Philippe Sly while in residence at the Banff Centre, Canada in 2009, and wrote a song cycle for him in 2011. This was followed in 2014 by another cycle for Sly and string quartet, Who Wrote the Book of Love?, commissioned by the Dante Quartet and also celebrating a friend’s 50th birthday. The lyrics, written by Dove’s long-term collaborator, Alasdair Middleton, comprise a sequence of highly evocative 17 poems, many short and aphoristic, featuring quotations from Sapho and Lorca, evocations of cabaret and a sense of creating a collage of brilliant pieces.
‘On the streets and in the sky: III. Very Gently Moving,’ Sacconi Quartet, from On the street and in the sky: Works by Jonathan Dove
The whole work, however, centers on Philippe Sly, whose performance here is ravishing, as his finely supported line combines with a sense of communication that draws you in. There is a beauty to Sly’s tone that mixes with his fine diction and the way he manages to convey the inner meaning of each diverse song. Most songs focus on Sly’s vocal line first, and the string quartet by turns supports and surrounds it with different webs of sound from delicate to intense to driving rhythms.
The combination of voice and string quartet but no piano is relatively unusual, though Dove has used it before in In Damascus. Here, Dove makes a wonderful virtue of the way Sly’s vocal line can emerge, self-supporting amidst arial gestures from the strings.
This is highly singable music, yet never trivial; the more intense songs do rather wring the heart, yet there are also a couple with dry wit worthy of Sondheim. One or two are positively vicious, and though the poet’s heart seems to get wrung repeatedly, his plight is never less than mesmerizing.
Vanishing Gold, Sacconi Quartet, from On the street and in the sky: Works by Jonathan Dove
We finish with Vanishing Gold, written for the Endellion Quartet’s 40th anniversary. Inspired by two probably extinct creatures, a bird and a toad from Costa Rica, but whose calls Dove weaves into five minutes of magic.
The disc, diverse at first, makes a highly satisfying whole, linked together by the threads of the Sacconi Quartet’s connection to Jonathan Dove; that all the performers have links and investment in Dove’s music is conveyed in these fine performances. And listening to Who Wrote the Book of Love? certainly made me want to hear it live.
Reviews published here by permission of Robert Hugill–a singer, composer, journalist, lover of opera and all things Handel–at Planet Hugill. To contact Robert and/or to receive his lively “This Month on Planet Hugill” e-newsletter, sign up on his Link Tree. Robert Hugill photo by Robert Piwko. Mr.Hugill’s review of On the streets and in the sky: Works by Jonathan Dove was published at Planet Hugill on 19 March 2025.
