Laudonia: The Grand Tour
CD Review, November 2025
Laudonia, Susan Hamilton (soprano), Martin Patscheider (trumpet), John Kitchen (harpsichord)
I’ve known the Scottish soprano, Susan Hamilton, for over 30 years, and have admired both her exceptional voice and her entrepreneurial skills over those years. She was co-founder, with Ben Parry, of the Dunedin Consort in 1996, a fact often forgotten or overlooked in discussions about our foremost early music group in Scotland. She and Ben founded the Consort as a vocal ensemble for Scottish singers in Scotland, using her prestige as one of the top early music sopranos in Europe at the time, performing with all the major baroque groups. I met her in Belgium in the early 1990s, when I was booked to sing solos in a series of Purcell and Pelham Humfrey concerts in Belgium and France, and we have been friends ever since. We sang several times together, most recently on the Dunedin’s CD of Bach’s St Matthew Passion in 2007, and she continues to flourish both as a teacher and a performer.
Recently, she set up a new group based in Scotland and Austria, Laudonia, Latin for Lothian, which seeks to expand our knowledge of early music in Scotland and wider Europe. To this end, the group has recently issued a CD, ‘The Grand Tour’, celebrating the monumental journey across Europe of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, 2nd Baronet, who made the Grand Tour of Europe, aged 21, from 1697-1699, taking in the delights of Vienna, Rome and Paris. No doubt he found more dubious haunts as well, but much of his time was spent learning the Harpsichord, and meeting and studying with some of the notable composers of the day, as well as visiting classical antiquities, particularly in Rome.
The CD starts with a brilliant sonata for trumpet, two violins and bass continuo, by Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713), and we are immediately wrapped in a cocoon of baroque splendour. Corelli was employed as court musician by Cardinal Ottoboni, one of the great musical patrons of the time, and his Palazzo della Cancelleria was a magnet for musicians and artists. I was fortunate enough, in 1989, to sing two Bach bass cantatas in the very same palazzo where Corelli worked with Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, in a room decorated by frescos by Giorgio Vasari from 1547. Alessandro Scarlatti was a frequent guest at the Palazzo. Famed as a virtuoso violinist, Corelli also wrote well for trumpet, and this first track on the album highlights that mercurial instrument, magnificently played here by Martin Patscheider.
The second track introduces the glorious voice of Susan Hamilton, in a sacred cantata, ‘O Felicissimus Paradysi’ by Johann Rosenmüller, for soprano, trumpet, strings and continuo. A scandal at court in Leipzig in 1655 forced the composer to flee to Italy, where he resurrected his career as a composer, and this attractive cantata, albeit with rather gory words, linking eternal life with Christ to slaughter, blood and martyrdom, is a superb example of his style. The combination of Susan Hamilton’s ecstatic pure soprano with the sparkling edge of Mr Patscheider’s pristine trumpet is stunning.
A harpsichord suite by Giovanni Battista Draghi (1640-1798) follows, mesmerically played by Scottish keyboard wizard, John Kitchen, with whom I recently performed in Dalkeith Palace.
Ms Hamilton returns for the next track, a trumpet tune by Daniel Purcell, from his incidental music for Thomas D’Urfay’s ‘Massaniello’ (1699). Brother of the more famous but short-lived Henry Purcell, Daniel was a decent composer in his own right, and this martial piece for soprano and trumpet effectively contrasts the two high voices in antiphony, in a call and response fashion.
The central piece of the CD is the extraordinary cantata by Sir John Clerk, dating from c1699, ‘Leo Scotiae Irritatus’ (The Lion of Scotland Enraged), set to words by Clerk’s friend, Herman Boerhaave, in defence of the ill-fated Darien Scheme (1695-1700) in which Scotland sought to colonise the Panama isthmus, and establish a colonial outpost in the Americas. It was a disaster, trying to create a new state in inhospitable surroundings, all the time hounded by the English and the French, and its financial ruin led inexorably to the Union of the Parliaments in 1707, and all that followed (for good or bad, depending on your view!).
Clerk’s cantata is a marvel of invention, both musical and historical, an anguished plea for God’s support and for Fortune’s Wheel to be reversed. It’s fascinating to read a contemporary piece desperate to see Scotland’s colony established, without the hindsight that now prevails in our understanding of the enterprise. The cantata itself, for soprano, violins and bass continuo, is a great opportunity for Ms Hamilton to express herself dramatically, and I love her willingness, both here and in some of the other works on the CD, to make frankly unlovely sounds in the pursuit of clarity of expression and intensity of text. She reminds me here of the wonderful French Countertenor, Dominique Visse, with whom I performed on various occasions in the past, and who regularly exaggerated some phrases in order to put over a text. The fact that Ms Hamilton can produce beautiful seamless legato and crystal clear pitch when needed is another aspect of her art that is rare to find.
The CD moves dramatically from the propaganda of ‘Leo Scotiae’ to Corelli’s famous sonata, ‘La Follia’ for virtuoso violin, exploring all the possibilities of that instrument in a series of 23 variations on a famous theme. The brilliant violinist, Jorge Jiménez, plays La Follia in a fantastic free and improvisatory style.
Antonio Cesti (1623-1669) would have been a name from the past for Sir John Clerk at the end of the century, but his expressive and indeed downright antagonistic view of love would have amused the young Scottish aristocrat. Again, Susan Hamilton has no qualms about distorting her voice for expressive and comedic purposes, and the cantata’s mixture of allegros and slower movements is deliciously naughty.
When in Rome, Sir John spent quite a lot of time studying keyboard works with the noted virtuoso, Bernardo Pasquini, and his suite in G Minor was eloquently played by John Kitchen here. It is good to see Dr Kitchen still at the peak of his powers, and to welcome his appearance with Laudonia to emphasise the Scottish/European context of the enterprise.
When I reviewed the initial concert by Laudonia in September 2023 at St Cecilia’s Hall in Edinburgh, I noted that the final piece in the programme, the secular cantata ‘Qual Mormorio Giocondo’ by Alessandro Melani, represented a brilliant stroke of programme planning by the group, featuring as it did, the combined wonders of soprano, trumpet, violins and continuo. The interplay between Ms Hamilton and Mr Patscheider is repeated here on the CD, and although several of the players in St Cecilia’s Hall were different from those on the CD, the overall standard remains satisfyingly high. In fact, I must say that I found the quality of the playing and singing outstanding throughout, and the recording, made in a church in Austria, is very clear and bright. Occasionally, I felt Ms Hamilton was slightly distant, particularly from the trumpet, but generally the balance was good. All in all, this is an excellent CD and I hope the first of several by Laudonia. It can be obtained by going to their website – www.laudonia.org – price £14.49.
