Senesino, Jenny Lind, Callas, Fischer-Dieskau . . . While audiences through the generations have been driven to heights of ecstatic frenzy by opera and vocal soloists, there is something about ensemble singing that has failed to produce such popular icons or to inspire anything like the same cult of hero-worship. The very nature of the genre – its self-effacing focus on group blend rather than individual limelight – might perhaps account for this, yet it’s an argument that only a fool would try to sustain in the face of the global phenomenon that is the King’s Singers. With a flawless blend and a balance of playful showmanship and sophisticated musicality that is, if anything, even more impressive live than on their many award-winning disks, the six-piece ensemble are superstars to a man.
The evening was a celebration of the Romance du Soir, with music exploring those perennially associated themes of love and the night. Wending its way from the madrigals of Weelkes to the part-songs of Elgar and Sullivan via a healthy dose of Saint-Saens, the concert was something of a whistle-stop tour through the highlights of the group’s latest CD.
The tone was set in the very first bars, the opening pair of Saint-Saens part-songs – Calme des Nuits and Romance du Soir. The centrepiece of the concert were four works by American composer Libby Larsen which make up A Lover’s Journey. The opening song, In the Still Garden set its insistently pulsing syncopated refrain of ‘O Bella Bionda, sei come l’onda’ against a more meditative treatment of extracts from James Joyce’s Simples. Also effective was Will You, nill You a rousing setting of Petruchio’s promise (or threat?) from The Taming of the Shrew to Kate, his wife-to-be. Playing with the percussive poetry of the short text and its unusual approach to the genre of the love song, this was a witty and exuberant gesture of a song that made a virtue of its simplicity. This technique proved less effective, however, in the cycle’s second song, St Valentine’s Day, whose otherwise effectively subversive take on the traditions of the festival was marred by the unduly repetitive textural effect of spread chords built up through the group, distracting the focus from the work’s text and its stark tale of the undoing of a young girl.
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