A hurdy gurdy is front and centre of the interesting array of instruments for December’s Keswick Music Society concert. The group PIVA The Renaissance Collective played music and songs from Tudor and Elizabethan times celebrating the Yuletide season. The programme started with a lively fanfare of some raw and unfamiliar sounds but the old tune we know well, In Dulci Jubilo.
We heard music played on recorders, shawns, crumhorns, border bagpipes and a hurdy gurdy, all reproduction instruments. There was a full audience despite the storm raging outside. The well-crafted singing of Jude Rees invigorated the historic tunes although it was hard to imagine a bawdy Tudor pub atmosphere with Winter Warmer ales on every table.
The Parish Church of St John, Keswick, has a very serious tree this Christmas; I wonder how they got it through the door!