The New York Times October 11, 2004
By JAMES R. OESTREICHApples against oranges wasn't the half of it. It was soprano against tenor, sackbut against hurdy-gurdy, 13th century against 16th century, and German repertory against Guatemalan in a performance competition sponsored by the service organization Early Music America at Corpus Christi Church on Wednesday as part of the first New York Early Music Celebration, just ended.
Could the judges find any basis for comparison among the six contending groups, with their wildly varied combinations of instruments, or for that matter, among the three excellent sopranos variously presented in Spanish, Italian and French song? After brief deliberation, the judges opted for simplicity, choosing the same performers that the audience had acclaimed on the spot: Asteria, a duo of Sylvia Rhyne, soprano, and Eric Redlinger, tenor and lutenist.
Ms. Rhyne and Mr. Redlinger put across not only their music, Burgundian songs from the mid-15th century, but also a style of performance, intimate and deeply communicative. They sang these songs of love and loss as if to each other, yet drew a listener in completely, sealing the process with a meltingly beautiful rendition of Claudin de Sermisy's "Languir Me Fais."
For their efforts, they were awarded $5,000 and an appearance at the Boston Early Music Festival next spring, and that was as it should be. But you have to hope that festival representatives were on hand to recruit the other spirited and gifted performers as well, especially the sopranos Jennifer Ellis and Elizabeth Ronan-Silva, each winning in their divergent repertories and styles.
Early Music America vol. 11, No. 3, Fall, 2005
By BEN DUNHAM...Winners of EMA's Unicorn Prize for Medieval and Renaissance Music, the duo Asteria (Sylvia Rhyne, soprano, and Eric Redlinger, tenor and lute) presented 'Flower of Passion, Thorn of Despair,' a beautifully enacted program of songs about 'chivalry and courtly love in the waning Middle Ages.' In music by Dufay, Binchois, Morton, and others, the performers wove a web of musical magic in the Lindsey Chapel of Emmanuel Church...
The Columbus Dispatch September 25, 2005
By JENNIFER HAMBRICKThe 26 th season of Early Music in Columbus began Friday with the refined sounds of Renaissance Europe.
Award-winning early-music vocal duo Asteria’s performances of 15 thcentury Burgundian chansons transformed the Pontifical College Josephinum’s St. Turibius Chapel into the private chamber of a French chateau.
This is no small feat. The vaulted arches of St. Turibius Chapel call to mind the cavernous Gothic cathedrals of the high Middle Ages and have acoustics to match. The gentle voices of soprano Sylvia Rhyne and tenor and lutenist Eric Redlinger could have been engulfed by the ample reverberance.
But with the gentleness of their sound, as well as their ever-changing positions onstage, the musicians invited the audience into their intimate space to experience tender, courtly love poetry confessed in song and, between musical numbers, read from a heartshaped, velvet-covered book.
Rhyne’s voice never lost its depth of sound or exquisite control. Redlinger provided a chivalrous shadow throughout, often in a slightly less focused sound than Rhyne’s and always deferring to her in their vocal balance.
Redlinger’s lute accompaniment was the barest palimpsest beneath it all. Though beautiful, the lute sound’s modesty at times almost entirely suppressed the third voice of the threevoice contrapuntal texture.
The performance was replete with moments of superb artistry. The ending of Asteria’s performance of Estienne Grossin’s Va T’ent Souspir floated to the heavens. In Robert Morton’s Vive Ma Dame, Rhyne and Redlinger brought out the song’s counterpoint without threatening the direction of the musical line.
Rhyne’s solo performance of Deuil Angoisseux, Gilles Binchois’ setting of poet Christine de Pizan’s lament for her husband, was a model of controlled anguish calling to mind the famed laments of widows Ariadne and Dido.
The duo’s encore presentation of Claudin de Sermisy’s Languir Me Fait ended the concert in a lovely whisper.
Early Music America vol. 11, No. 4, Winter, 2005
By DEBORAH LAWRENCELe Souvenir de Vous me Tue /
Medieval Chansons from the Court of Philip the Good /
Asteria (Sylvia Rhyne, soprano, Eric Redlinger, tenor, lute) / Asteria AMCD 0404In this graceful disc, the duo Asteria, winners of EMA's 2004 Medieval/Renaissance Performance Competition, invite the listener to imagine the musical world of Burgundy, concentrating on works that were associated with the court of Philip the Good (1396-1467).
Ths Burgundian chanson of the 15th century generally featured refined poetry celebrating the ideal of courtly love cast in a delicate, three-part melodic fabric with one prominent, exquisite tune. There is perhaps no more beautiful example than "Adieu Ces Bon Vins De Lannoys" by Guillaume Dufay (c.1400-1474), especially in Asteria's sweet and heartfelt rendition.
Throughout, the blend of Sylvia Rhyne's soprano and Eric Redlinger's tenor with lute is both crystal clear and warm, but the solo works create an even more intimate feeling. For Gilles Binchois's "Pour Prison," solo voice and lute lend directness to the poetry. "Dona Gentile" by Dufay, is heard as a lute solo, pulling the audience in even closer.
In addition to the French music, Asteria includes a tiny Spanish gem by Juan Vasqauez (c.1500-1560) and a folksong-like German work. As attractive as the better-known French repertoire, these songs refresh with their more casual structure. Rhyne and Redlinger bring out the beauty of this repertoire with warmth and grace and make it very alive indeed.
The Lute Society of America Winter, 2005
By JIM STIMSONLe Souvenir de Vous me Tue /
Medieval Chansons from the Court of Philip the Good /
Asteria (Sylvia Rhyne, soprano, Eric Redlinger, tenor, lute) / Asteria AMCD 0404The concept behind Asteria is so elegantly simple it's a wonder no one else is doing it: a soprano and a tenor who also plays lute. This enables two players to perform a vast amount of material, including virtually the entire 15th-century Burgundian chanson repertoire, the focus of this recording.
Eric Redlinger plays the lute finger-style, using five and seven course instruments made by Cezar Mateus. This allows him to play both tenor and bass parts on the lute, or occasionally take the melody in a polyphonic arrangement. His gentle, slightly reedy tenor voice provides a supple backing for Rhyne's elegant soprano. His lute tone has enough edge to cut through the texture and balance with the voices.
The opening track, "Quant La Doulce Jouvencelle," from the celebrated Canonici 213 manuscript, shows off the duo's abilities, with lute and soprano; lute, soprano and tenor; and lute alone taking turns. This chanson, from the same massive tome that includes many pieces by Dufay and Binchois, is anonymous but is in much the same vein as those two masters, with graceful melody enlivened by angular rhythms in an open, transparent texture.
The title track, "Le Souvenir de Vous" by Robert Morton, begins as a lute solo before the chanson proper. The leisurely pace and gentle, unforced performance suits both the music and the ensemble well.
As appealing as this disc is, I came away wanting more. Binchois, seemingly the perfect composer for the duo and an exemplar of the Burgundian chanson tradition, is only heard once, on "Pour Prison." Dufay, the leading composer of the 15th century, is a little better served with three chansons, but one is a lute solo and the others are perhaps the most-often performed of his 90-odd chansons: "Se la Face ay Pale" and "Adieu Ces Bons Vins." With a total time of just 37:43, it seems the addition of several more chansons by these masters, or more of the many fine anonymous works from the repertoire, would have rounded out the disc nicely.
San Francisco Classical Voice June, 2006
By KANEEZ MUNJEEMany people seemed to observe that this year's Berkeley Festival and Exhibition was somewhat smaller in scale than previous years' festivals had been, and that audiences too were smaller than in years past. Yet the festival's offerings were met with great enthusiasm, and the conversations I overheard while walking from concert to concert unvaryingly described delightful and transcendent experiences. The duo Asteria - Sylvia Rhyne, soprano; Eric Redlinger, lute and tenor - captivated their audience on the evening of June 9 at Hertz Hall with a program of largely Burgundian chansons, with a few sacred and English pieces offered, as well. Asteria was largely unknown before winning Early Music America's medieval/Renaissance music competition in 2004, but from the audience's reception on Friday, it is unlikely that they will remain unknown for long.
The duo Asteria
The two performers offer different strengths: Rhyne has had an international career in musical theater, and she uses her acting abilities to bring the texts to life. Her voice is beautifully nuanced and works well for this repertoire. Redlinger has a soft and gentle voice, supportive but not obtrusive. His lute playing is delicately finessed, and his knowledge of the period and repertoire immense, as he showed when he spoke about their encore piece, Languir me fais by Sermisy. Together, Rhyne and Redlinger give a sensitive and heartfelt rendering of these chansons, connecting intimately with each other and with the audience, using pianos for dramatic effect, and varying their "instrumentation" so that some pieces have lute introductions and some have only one singer.
Their program offered many wonderful songs, including an anonymous piece in three languages, Novo Profusi Gaudio, Tant est mignonne by Dufay, Pour prison and Seule esgarée by Binchois, and Morton's Le souvenir de vous me tue. Asteria singled out one of the pieces for its text: Dueil angoisseux by Binchois, to a poem by Christine de Pisan, written after the early death of her husband, to whom she was clearly devoted. This was an exception to the prevailing texts, which all celebrated the Lady or the Virgin, both of which were the standard tropes of the day. At the end, after their encore, they invited Shira Kammen to join them on one final piece, citing her profound influence on them and celebrating the rich repertoire of the medieval period. (K.M.)
Journal de Saone et Loire April 21, 2007
By CÉJYSylvia Rhyne et Eric Redlinger, primés en musique du Moyen-Age aux Etats Unis, ont offert un concert intimiste, presque religieux dans une salle du chateau de Germolles, devant la cheminée monumentale.
Le public a peu auparavant, guidé par les maitres des lieux, Christian et Matthieu, pu s'imprégner de l'atmosphere des salles du chateau dans lesquelles la musique était jouée au Moyen-Age. Germolles est la seule demeure encore debout des Ducs de Bourgogne et la musique d'Asteria ne pouvait trouver la meilleur endroit pour résonner et réveiller la vie du chateau au temps des duchesses et des chevaliers. Veritable récital d'amour, de gestuelle et d'expressions corporelle, la presentation de Sylvia et Eric vous prend “aux tripes” et vous conduit dans un monde d'émotions fortes, de peines et de joies, en osmose avec le public. Meme si les paroles restent incompréhensibles au quidam, les émotions font le reve, premettent de deviner et de partager. L'incomparable Sylvia Rhyne, soprano (expérimentée en opera, opérettes et comédies musicales à Broadway), véritable interpràte, presque comédienne, a subjugué le public tandis qu'Eric Redlinger, le beau ténor chevalier, accompagnait sa belle avec son luth.
Page d'amour, d'histoire, de vie, le récital a fait découvrir une conception nouvelle de la musique de Moyen-Age, plus ouverte sur le monde, modernisée, mais gardant toute ses racines et son identité.
Sylvia et Eric s'offrent une belle carriere dans le monde entier ou leur talent est reconnu. Ils ont déja enregistré deux CD et un troisieme est en gestation.
Asteria (nom du duo) donnera deux concerts en Cote d'Or, à l'Abbaye des Chartreux le 23 Juin et à l'Abbaye de Fontenay le 4 Aout. Les concerts sont exceptionels car le duo est de “passage” en France.
San Francisco Classical Voice Jan 12, 2008
By MICHELLE DULAK THOMSONOne of the pleasures of working in the field of early music - really early music, that is, music from well outside the ordinary classical musician's realm of experience - must be the sense of having found a corner of the repertoire and built a relationship to it, minutely and intimately and genuinely from scratch. Dedicate yourself to knowing and loving Bach or Haydn or Brahms, and you are to some extent only taking a great common love a little farther than most, building on an appreciation that comes easily to many.
Asteria
Getting on the same intimate terms with, say, Ciconia or Dunstable or Ockeghem is another matter, and a much trickier one. But do it well - come to feel as much at home in the 14th or 15th century as most of SFCV's readership likely is in the 18th or 19th - and you come to be the medium through which the rest of us can approach music we'd otherwise neither encounter nor understand.
So although Asteria, which opened Seventh Avenue Performances' 2008 season with a recital Saturday night, has by conventional standards a quite narrow repertory, the atmosphere of its compact gem of a concert was anything but straitened. The duo - soprano Sylvia Rhyne and tenor and lutenist Eric Redlinger - drew the entire program from the Burgundian chanson repertoire dating roughly between 1420 and 1470.
The same little cache of music seems to be Asteria's sole province, judging by the contents of its two published CDs (which between them cover virtually all the music heard Saturday) and its concert programs (listen online). But, graced with singing and playing as loving and understanding as this, theirs seemed not a cramped musical corner but generously spacious, too full of delights for such a short visit to encompass.
How to go about performing this cc is even now an open question, at least in the sense that no one solution has gained overwhelming sway. If you have a piece in three or four contrapuntal parts, not all of which necessarily have the text fitted to them, where (if anywhere) do you use instruments, where voices? Asteria, with two voices and a lute at its disposal, generally gives the cantus and tenor lines - the two strands that form the contrapuntal framework for the others - to the voices, and everything left over to the lute.
It's an arrangement that does make the counterpoint harder to hear. Partly because the played lines aren't sustained, partly because the timbres call up memories of (centuries-later) lute-accompanied song, the ear tends to perceive the plucked parts as harmonic "accompaniment" rather than melodic lines in their own right. Rhyne's voice, too, is somewhat more penetrating and her singing more emotionally demonstrative than Redlinger's. I caught myself wondering once or twice whether some of the performances' extraordinary appeal couldn't be chalked up to the way they quietly assimilated the unfamiliar 15th-century idiom to more comfortable ideas of melody and harmony, tune and accompaniment.
A Range of Emotional Communication
For the appeal was extraordinary. Asteria's performances had an uncanny quality of emotional immediacy and intimacy, a tone difficult to catch. Part of it was the plangent gentleness of the singing and playing. Part was theatrics, so subtly managed as to seem the reverse of theatrical. Rhyne and Redlinger varied their positions from number to number. Sometimes she sat and he played and sang as to her; sometimes they stood close side by side, her hand on his waist, singing as though to each other.
Like the touches of "earlie musicke" stage-setting - the candlelight, Rhyne's floor-length burgundy velvet gown and heavy necklace, the copy of the Chansonnier Cordiforme that she picked up as though to read or sing from occasionally - the changes of posture sketched a context for the music without bludgeoning us with it.
On a technical level the performances were near-flawless. Rhyne did have a slight tendency to drift sharp. It showed up most often when she was left relatively to herself, as in the two chansons where the duo sang a cappella, or in Binchois' Deuil angoisseux (Anguished grief), which she sang by herself to the lute. Otherwise both the suave singing and Redliger's deft, delicate lute playing were delightful considered as sounds, and many times more so as they wrapped themselves around these disarmingly graceful but intricate little songs.
Greater depths were plumbed, too. The audience was given only "synopses" of the texts (translations of the opening lines, generally), which was a shame in music so subtly wrought from poetry, but for one chanson Rhyne went into some detail about the poem and its author. This was the aforementioned Dueil angoisseux, to words of Christine de Pisan, a woman widowed early in motherhood who wrote professionally to support herself after her husband's death.
Into Binchois' setting of her maddened lament Rhyne poured palpable, heartbreaking anguish. Once, midphrase, she broke off suddenly, to stunned silence from the audience, only to begin again, falteringly and faintly, with the uncertain accompaniment of Redlinger's lute. (A video is available of an Asteria performance of Dueil angoisseux here; it is a more contained performance than Saturday's, but still gives some idea of the spell it wove.)
Inside an Ancient Landscape
For the rest, the recurring marvel for me was the easy fluency of the performances, a fluency that never strayed into flippancy. Rhyne and Redlinger seemed entirely comfortable in the music, inhabiting a style rather than straining to portray one. (They effortlessly passed my personal acid test for early-music "stylishness" - "Can these people ornament a line without sounding like they're working at it?") How close to the performance-practice state of the art their manner comes I don't know, but anyone who can convey the inside of a musical world so unfamiliar and yet so lovely as theirs is doing something right.
The one encore was Claudin de Sermisy's Languir me fais. Right out of the period, that one, as Redlinger explained (it dates from the 1520s, some 50 years after anything in the printed program), but utterly exquisite. If Asteria should ever tire of the 15th century, it knows where to go next.
Michelle Dulak Thomson is a violinist and violist who has written about music for Strings, Stagebill, Early Music America, and The New York Times.