MUSIC REVIEW : Lute Recital Marks Gold Medal Finale

To the quiet strains of John Dowland’s “King of Denmark’s Galliard,” played by Argentine lutenist Marcelo Millan, Ambassador Auditorium’s Gold Medal series came unceremoniously to an end. Apparently forever.

This important series deserved tolling bells, or a brass-band funeral dirge. Presenting young competition winners and lesser-known soloists of consistently high merit and strong purpose, at rock-bottom ticket prices, the Gold Medal meant opportunity for performer and listener alike. Due to financial shortfalls, scratch that out.

One would like to pretend that Millan’s recital sent the series out with flags flying but, in truth, it proved only sporadically interesting. The lute is a domestic instrument, pure and simple, and the music written for it, even when carefully miked, is suitable for performance at a Renaissance hearth, not in a hall that seats 1,262.

What’s more, Millan, an extremely poor public speaker who insisted on talking, presented an obscure program of music from the late 1400s to the early 1600s that only a professor could love. Sure, it was a welcome opportunity to hear such historical footnotes as three Francesco Spinacino recercari --among the earliest pieces of music printed in movable type--but it would have been better if they hadn’t turned out to be meandering twiddle twaddle.

And too much of the music--by such composers as Capirola, Narvaez, Mudarra, and Velderravanos); some of it attributed confusingly in the program to publishers--was like that.

Still, there were moments, and those who left at intermission missed the best set of the evening, music of the English lutenists of the early 1600s. It was impossible to resist the nimble steps and gracious tunes of such pieces as “Robinson’s May” (no joke), “Kemp’s Jig” and “Watkin’s Ale.” Simplicity itself.

And they missed the most poignant moment of the evening, when, at 9:55 p.m., the Gold Medal passed and Los Angeles became a poorer place.