Scherzi Musicali, Dowland in Copenhagen

At the Danish court, the most melancholic of all lute masters finds recognition, freedom, and a monarch who pays generously. Four hundred years after Dowland's birth, Scherzi Musicali follows in his footsteps to Scandinavia, where Dowland's songs resonate between northern light and courtly refinement. While the songs are usually performed by a single singer with a lute, Nicolas Achten chose four voices and four lutes: a consort that lets the music breathe outside the intimacy of the royal chambers – broader, richer, but still poetic and on a human scale. Werken van Deense contemporaries like Nielsen, Aagesen, and Pederson, who colored Dowland's stay in the north, together sketch a high-standing musical culture in which English refinement, continental taste, and Scandinavian clarity found each other.