Two masters of light and shade, of fantasy and invention, of formidable technical skill and profound musicianship.

Such epithets can be as readily applied to cellist Nicolas Altstaedt and lutenist Thomas Dunford as to Marin Marais and JS Bach. Fortunately, all four were present during this most perfect of concerts, the first in Altstaedt and Dunford’s national tour for Musica Viva Australia.

The music: exquisite. The playing: exquisite. Though if one were pressed to say what made this concert uniquely special, it would be the unusually intense quality of attention, of listening, of giving oneself over entirely to silence as much as to sound, that was required, nay, demanded of one.

This was perhaps nowhere more exemplified than in Dunford’s arrangement for solo lute of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007. On one level, barely audible in the Winthrop Hall. On another, like peals of distant thunder. How did Dunford accomplish this? Largely through the power of suggestion. And an exciting, improvisatory style of playing so compelling that one leant forward, straining to catch the point at which sounds die on the air.

In each of the six mostly French dance movements typical of the Baroque suite, Dunford’s variety of touch and phrasing, of a pace and flow completely anchored in style brisé, was such as to conjure up – if one may be permitted to say – a mythological musicology which surely resembles some kind of truth.

Read the full review at Limelight