Over the years, the Lady Chapel of Lichfield Cathedral has been the setting for some of the Lichfield Festival’s most transporting moments.
There’s still a conspiratorial little thrill in arriving at the cathedral and pushing through the dispersing crowd from the evening’s main concert in the secret knowledge that you and a lucky handful are about to hear something really special.
Though if the crowds for this recital by counter-tenor Iestyn Davies and the lutenist Thomas Dunford are any indication, it’s no longer quite such a secret.
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The prospect of hearing an hour of lute songs by Dowland and his contemporaries clearly appealed, as well it might.
Davies is an unaffected and engaging artist, and a lot of the evening’s pleasure came in his understated rapport with Dunford; a quick glance here, a little smile there, and an unfussy attentiveness to each other’s performance that helped them craft these lovely songs together as one.
Unfortunately, the Lady Chapel’s acoustic worked against such intimacy; without any printed text, the words were (from half-way back, at any rate) undiscernible.
That left us to enjoy the rich, almost Italianate warmth of Davies’ tone, its silvery sheen on the top of a phrase and the incredible delicacy with which he left a final note fading, suspended in the stillness.