★★★★☆ Vocal splendours from England, bringing an eclectic musical “tasting menu” Down Under.

Melbourne Recital Centre
July 28, 2015

In a crowded market, the English vocal group I Fagiolini stands out for the engaging way it presents a very broad range of repertory. You have to applaud a group with projects names such as The Full Monteverdi and Tallis in Wonderland! With founding director, Robert Hollingworth as our witty yet erudite guide, audiences on this inaugural national tour are treated to a ‘tasting menu’  that runs all the way from counterreformation polyphony to recently composed commissions, from Renaissance Spain to contemporary Australia. Such a wide-ranging program sends a subtle but important reminder that music, and in particular, vocal music, has been, and can be an important part of everyday human existence.

By way of presenting their choral credentials, the group opened the program with a rapturously sonorous account of Victoria’s eight-part motet Alma redemptoris Mater followed by the exuberant O clap your hands of Orlando Gibbons. Revealing taut ensemble and a sensitivity to changes of mood, these two works whetted the musical appetite for more.

A change of mood came with Giovanni Croce’s Il gioco dell’occa (The Game of...