William Dart review: The Gesualdo Six

The Guesualdo Six, a British vocal ensemble, are: Michael Craddock (baritone), Guy James (countertenor), Owain Park (director), Joseph Wicks (tenor), Josh Cooter (tenor) and Sam Mitchell (bass).

It was the very model of a festival concert.

The Gesualdo Six’s The Wishing Tree presented an evening of a cappella wonderment from one of the world’s finest vocal ensembles. A succession of Renaissance madrigals and motets, curated around the theme of courage, offered total enchantment.

The programme flowed as smoothly as the blend of the men’s voices, between music for four to six singers. This ranged from a hymn-like evening prayer by Tallis to a portrayal of David, weeping over the death of his son, dramatically captured in pungent harmonies by Thomas Tomkins.

Top marks to Auckland Arts Festival for supplying a full printed programme to supplement the warm and witty commentary provided by the group’s director, Owain Park.

Having lyrics to read, in both Italian and English, made one doubly appreciate the passion of the men’s performance in madrigals by Marenzio and Palestrina, individual voices rising and falling back into the texture as they were consumed by the pangs and torments of love.

In Dry those lovely eyes by Gesualdo, the radical Italian composer who inspired the ensemble’s name, the men navigated tortuous textures and tonalities as if they had been written for them.

Neatly pairing two madrigals about swans by Arcadelt and Orlando Gibbons allowed one to reflect on the eternal wisdom expressed by the English composer’s dying bird - “More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.”

For all their polyphonic perfection, these men are not locked in a Hall of Musical Antiquities. An imaginative contemporary bracket included a centenary tribute to Hungarian avant-gardist Gyorgy Ligeti, with his wacky setting of Lewis Carroll’s The Lobster Quadrille.

The Gesualdo Six on Wednesday night, at the encore, brought the old world and the new together in a collaboration with Seumanu Simon Matafai and the Auckland Gospel Choir.

What: The Gesualdo Six

Where: Holy Trinity Cathedral

When: Wednesday

Reviewer: William Dart