Gesualdo Six
St Mark’s Unitarian Church, Castle Terrace - 25/10/23
I spotted on Facebook last week that the Gesualdo Six were performing on 25th October in St Mark’s Unitarian Church on Castle Terrace in Edinburgh. I had heard this vocal group in Haddington at the Lammermuir Festival in September, and was delighted to find them back in Scotland again. Actually, this was their first ever appearance in Edinburgh, a concert hurriedly arranged to coincide with their journey north to sing in St Andrews on Friday 27th. The haste of the arrangements meant that publicity was slim, but a decent audience turned out, on a dreich evening, to hear what I can confidently assert is the premier small vocal ensemble in Britain at the moment.
Their planned programme, different from the St Andrews concert, was thrown into confusion by the sudden illness of the first countertenor and the first tenor, who have caught an autumnal bug. Naturally a group of six losing a third of their number was potentially catastrophic, but the recently recruited second countertenor, Alasdair Austin, stepped up to the plate on his own, and the heroic Will Wright was catapulted in at extremely short notice to take over from Joseph Wicks. Frankly, no one could possibly have noticed the changes, as the group proceeded to sing one of the finest concerts I have been lucky enough to hear for a long time.
St Mark’s is a church which has put on Fringe concerts for years, but which I didn’t really know. Built in 1835 for the Unitarian congregation (they don’t recognise the Trinity), this is a delightful venue, seating about 500, I reckon, and with a lovely acoustic. It was perfect for the Gesualdos, and permitted them to show us what a superb ensemble they are, homogenous in tone, and with a perfect understanding of each other, even with personnel changes.
When I reviewed them in September at St Mary’s Haddington in their ‘Secret Byrd’ programme, I waxed lyrical about the superlative countertenor, Guy James, and at first I was worried that his absence here would be problematic. However, Alasdair Austin, who has recently taken over as second countertenor, and who was sparingly used at Haddington, proved to be a wonderful addition to the group. His voice is lighter and gentler than Guy’s, but no less fine, and I found his singing marvellously expressive and the crowning glory of the ensemble. He seems to go very high, and some of his floated phrases were divine.
Will Wright, who graduated from Bristol University in 2017, fitted seamlessly into the ensemble. I had heard him singing as part of the Marian Consort at the Lammermuir Festival, and I see that he is one of the regular singers at the church of St Bartholomew the Great, next to Barts Hospital in London. With a beautiful mellifluous tenor voice, he blended superbly with the Gesualdo 6 (or 5 tonight!), and worked well with Alasdair above and Josh Cooter, the other tenor. Josh had quite a few solo moments, and his contribution was delightful, as was the baritone, Michael Craddock, who occasionally was allowed to let rip, and revealed a lovely tone. As I wrote in September, the group is fortunate to have a great bass to provide the foundation of the sound, in Owain Park, who is also the director of the ensemble. He made all the announcements and provided continuity throughout the concert, as well as showing off a really beautiful and sonorous bass. As a bass myself, I am not easily impressed by others with my voice type, but Owain is the real thing. He goes very low – some of the motets were in low keys in the absence of soprano voices – but never grovelled or growled, and provided the basis of the whole sound of the group. It’s a huge responsibility to be the lowest voice, and Owain took it on with aplomb.
Like the Hilliard Ensemble before them in the latter part of their stunning career, the Gesualdo Six sing without a conductor (although Owain is their director, who seems to give the nod for starts and finishes), and the relationships among them seem almost telepathic. Clearly, they know instinctively how to phrase, and I am sure that hours of practice go into making certain that what we see and hear is well-nigh perfect. Even with a deputy in their midst, there was no noticeable beating or mugging going on, and the result was a concert of the highest class. What made this ensemble stand out for me was the expressive singing of each individual performer. There was not the slightest hint of Oxbridge preciousness that one can find in some groups, and the emotional intensity of some of the pieces was visceral in its impact. Nothing was overdone, and there was no operatic excess or exaggeration, but one was aware of the deep feeling lying at the heart of this wonderful music from the English Renaissance.
What, then, of the music? It was a dream programme for those of us who drool over Tallis and Byrd, and covered a period from the 14th to the 16th century, a time of huge political and religious turmoil, but also one of astonishing accomplishment in choral music in particular. As Owain pointed out, composers of the time, especially in the 16th century, hardly knew from year to year what was acceptable and what was prohibited, sometimes on literal pain of death. The Reformation forced on the nation by Henry VIII was both religious and political, and the confusion of his reign led on to the complications of short-lived monarchs of different beliefs, and then into Elizabeth’s reign, fraught by Catholic plots and Spanish espionage. Tallis and Byrd in particular were often writing for different markets, as it were; in Latin for the wealthy Catholic dissidents and in English for the reformed church faithful. It was amazing what they occasionally got away with, and we heard several examples in this concert of music which had different meanings for different people.
The Gesualdo Six started their concert with the Compline hymn, ‘Te lucis ante terminum’ (before the ending of the day) by Thomas Tallis, which starts as a plainchant and develops polyphonically into a rich harmonisation. They followed the Tallis with Byrd’s exquisite ‘Ave verum Corpus’, simple yet stunning in its beauty.
We heard the first part ofTallis’ ‘Lamentations of Jeremiah’ next, with the second part coming at the end of the concert. This moving elegy to the destruction of Jerusalem is one of the consummate masterpieces of the Renaissance, and its particular poignancy and relevance to the present time was noted by Owain in his introduction. The music is truly remarkable, and as Tallis differentiates his setting depending on whether the words are in Hebrew or Latin, the Gesualdo Six brought out all the nuances in this hauntingly beautiful music. In their low key, the harmonies were exquisite, with Owain providing a ground for the higher voices to expand and soar. The plea at the end of each section for Jerusalem to ‘turn to the Lord’ made us think how all the combatants in the Middle East think that the same Lord is on their side, without appreciating that there should be no sides and no winners.
The concert continued with a mixture of religious and secular pieces from the English Renaissance, with more hit pieces like ‘If ye love me’ by Tallis, the lovely round ‘Ah Robyn, gentil Robyn’ and the overwhelmingly sensuous and moving lament by King David for his son, Absolom, ‘When David heard’, by Thomas Tomkins, sneaking us into the 17th century, with its luscious chromaticism and the agonised bitterness of the living for the dead - “Would God I had died for thee!”
Throughout all this wonderful music, the Gesualdo Six poured out the most perfect sounds in total harmony and balance. A far larger audience should have been there to hear such perfection, and I hope when they return to Edinburgh, as return they must, that they can sing in somewhere like Greyfriars, which would allow a much bigger attendance. For now, I hope they get a good audience in St Andrews and I was delighted to learn that they will be back in Haddington next September for another concert in the Lammermuir Festival. Please look out for them when they do. I shall make sure our EMR readers are given notice.
Cover photo: Ash Mills
