Three of us went on a birthday outing to hear the Gesualdo Six at the Wiltshire Music Centre, giving a programme called Nachtmusik, setting texts in English, Italian and German, with less emphasis on the early repertoire that features in their recordings, and joined by the cellist Josephine Knight. Although the first half did include pieces by Dowland and Monteverdi. In between those we enjoyed a recently-composed piece, The Horse enters Troy, in which Rebecca Farthing sets lines from Aeneid II, and noted her name.
The second half focused on German Romantic compositions. A number of the pieces were arrangements and the most substantial of these was Wo?, a short text set to music arranged from the slow movement of the String Quintet D956. This movement regularly turns up when people versed in classical music list their favourite pieces; I can understand what they see in it, although it would not make my own list. We didn’t feel the arrangement really worked for us as we found ourselves missing the strings.
The only piece I’d ever sung myself was Rheinberger’s Abendlied, only unlike in Ely Cathedral we were supplied with a translation. We also heard Reger’s Nachtlied (as with anything else by Reger, I can’t remember much about this), Schubert’s partsong Die Nacht D983c and Owain Park’s own Sommernacht (some imagination required here at the back end of February).
Not all the six sang in every piece, with the ‘spare’ singers standing at one side of the stage till they were needed again. Owain Park gave engaging introductions.
It was a well attended concert with several Bathonians I knew there. Early music mavens would have liked the programme slanted more in their direction, but the rest of us were happy. They can be heard again at the Bath Festival in May.