Highly recommended – we always enjoy Cardinall’s Musick concerts. We love their sound and we like the way that Andrew Carwood talks to the audience with a likeable mix of deep scholarship and folksy delivery.
Lots of unfamiliar pieces and even unfamiliar composers in there.
Here is a little vid of this group rehearsing and talking Byrd a few years ago:
I’m starting to get a bit fussy in my old age – perhaps because I am learning more about early music.
For example, it seemed to me that the Gregorian Chants interspersed in the Guerrero in the first half, were delivered (at least by the bass and tenor voices) in a staccato style when changing note within a word, quite contrary to the “smoothing” technique Ian Pittaway suggested to me. Patrick Craig, the countertenor, sang with that smoothing technique and it sounded cleaner to my ears. Janie thought the staccato was deliberate and fine.
I also found myself comedically irritated by a spelling mistake in the words for the Agnus Dei in the programme lyrics for that Guerrero mass…spelling that phrase Angus Dei at one point. It made me wonder whether there is a beef of God as well as a lamb of God.
But these are tiny points. The concert was a feast for the ears and just the calming experience I needed after a long day.
I particularly enjoyed the second half of the concert, with shorter pieces by Peter Philips, Philippe Verdelot, Adrian Willaert, Francisco Guerrero, Luca Marenzio, Daniel Torquet (“who he?” I hear you cry – Andrew Carwood is struggling to trace him too) and William Byrd taking the first 40-45 minutes of that second half.
There was a Christmassy encore by Hieronymus Praetorius – we were horrified to learn that, liturgically/technically speaking, we only reach the end of Christmas this weekend.
Still, we loved the concert and thoroughly recommend the broadcast to lovers of this type of music.
I’d heard a lot about The Gesualdo Six – they are currently the hottest boy band of the early music vocal consort world – so I have been keen to see them for some time.
This early evening concert at St John’s Smith Square slot didn’t suit Janie on a Wednesday, so I made one of those unusual but no longer rare concert bookings just for me.
What a super short concert it was.
SJSS had been turned around for this concert, so the audience faces the organ, not the massive, tired-looking stage – something I know they’d been talking/thinking about, but until now I had not yet experienced it. Janie and I have thought for some time that this configuration would work better for soloists and small ensembles.
It does work better.
I got in early to bagsy a good seat and took a picture. You can see my coat draped across a front row seat.
SJSS Turned Around
Nice touch with the candles.
The hall soon filled up – several hundred people I would estimate – the largest audience I have seen at SJSS for a while. The idea of doing an early evening concert of this kind ahead of the main event certainly worked for this evening – perhaps also linked to the fact that this concert was part of the Holy Week Festival.
The people sitting to the left of me clearly knew one of the singers, Guy James, who chatted with them briefly before the gig. The younger woman in that party asked him to throw in a pop song or two – but he shyly demurred, saying that he’d love to but it would probably get him into trouble with the others. Not very rock’n’roll.
I did and do have an arithmetical problem with this group. When I looked at the picture on their website – click here –and/ or the above SJSS web page and/or indeed the programme for the evening, I kept counting seven people in The Gesualdo Six.
A knowledgeable-sounding fellow sat next to me about five minutes before the start of the Gesualdo Six concert – he said that he had seen some of the performers before (e.g. Joseph Wicks recently) but never the entire ensemble together and was very excited to be getting to see them.
I mentioned my cardinal number problem – i.e. the matter of seven people comprising The Gesualdo Six, hoping for some insight from this knowledgeable fellow.
“I know, yes…tough isn’t it,” was that gentleman’s unhelpful reply.
But from now it’s all good news.
There were only six people in The Gesualdo Six on the night – which put me at my ease again.
The music was absolutely lovely.
Indeed, the opening number, Tallis’s Te Lucis Ante Terminum, was worth the price of admission alone (as sports commentators would tend to put it).
I don’t normally go for modern choral music mixed in with early music, but I was much taken by the several lullabies by Veljo Tormis, which contrasted nicely with the Byrd lullaby.
I also enjoyed Owain Park’s own piece, Phos Hilaron. I cannot honestly claim to have got much out of Joanna Marsh’s pieces, though.
But basically I loved the gig – they are a wonderful ensemble – so when Owain Park announced that we could buy pre-release copies (due out Easter Weekend) of the group’s debut album on exit, I was up there with my £12 like a shot.
You can order/buy the album from all the usual outlets or direct from the band’s site by clicking below:
Below is a video from an unspecified place of The Gesualdo Six singing some Tallis – a piece from the album but not from the gig.
Likewise, the following piece of Thomas Tomkins (seen below in Ely Cathedral) is on the album but wasn’t on show at the gig:
They only sang one piece of Gesualdo on the night – not the following one, but I can’t let you sample The Gesualdo Six without Gesualdo himself:
Finally, below is a little documentary piece about the group from SJSS itself two years ago. They look unfeasibly young in the vid – they still look young but not THAT young. Two years is a long time for a boy band. Another couple of years on the road and they might look like The Rolling Stones by 2020.
All of this rather puts my own attempt at some seasonal, medieval-style performance into the shade:
