Soprano Robert Hollingworth Countertenor/Director Nicholas Hurndall Smith Tenor Charles Gibbs Bass
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I FAGIOLINI Alison Hill soprano Eleanor Minney mezzo-soprano Robert Hollingworth countertenor/director Nicholas Hurndall Smith tenor Charles Gibbs bass Program William CORNYSHE Woefully array’d 8 min ANON Hey trolly loly lo 4 min John WILBYE Oft have I vowed 2 min Thomas RAVENSCROFT The three ravens 5 min Henry PURCELL When the cock begins to crow 3 min John ISUM When Celia was learning the spinet 2 min Thomas TOMKINS Too much I once lamented 6 min INTERVAL Henry PURCELL Music for a while 7 min Thomas PHILLIPS Crows in the cornfield 3 min Robert Lucas PEARSALL Take, o take those lips away 2 min Robert Lucas PEARSALL Adieu, adieu, my native shore 2 min Benjamin BRITTEN Eight Medieval Lyrics, Sacred and profane op 91 15 min FLANDERS & SWANN Pillar to post 3 min FLANDERS & SWANN The Sloth 3 min I Fagiolini Grounded in the classics of Renaissance and 20th-century vocal repertoire, I Fagiolini is renowned for its innovative and often staged productions of this music. I Fagiolini has staged Handel with masks, Purcell with puppets, and in 2004 premiered The Full Monteverdi, a dramatised account of the composer’s Fourth Book of Madrigals (1603) by John La Bouchardière, which has since been turned into a highly successful film shown all over the world. In 2006 I Fagiolini toured its South African collaboration Simunye, and in 2009 created Tallis in Wonderland, a new way of hearing polyphony with live and recorded voices. In 2011, I Fagiolini celebrated its 25th anniversary with The Spell (a commission from Orlando Gough), a semi-staged production of Purcell’s King Arthur with The English Concert, and the world premiere recording of Striggio’s Mass in 40 Parts on Decca. This recording stayed at the top of the specialist classical chart for nearly four months and won the 2011 Gramophone Early Music Award and a Diapason d’or de l’année. The 2012 season featured a tour of the Striggio Mass, the group’s Royal Albert Hall BBC Proms debut and the release of 1612 Italian Vespers (Gramophone CD of the Month), premiering multi-choir music by Viadana and a reconstructed ‘lost’ Gabrieli Magnificat. It also saw the launch of yet another unlikely collaboration, How LiKe an Angel, this time with Australian contemporary circus company, Circa; the show premiered as part of the Perth International Arts Festival and toured the UK in 2012 and 2013 to full houses. I Fagiolini closed the year with a new production for Opera North, including shadow puppetry, of David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion. Recent highlights have included debuts at the new Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (Shakespeare’s Globe) and Carnegie Hall. I Fagiolini’s most recent immersive theatre project, Betrayal: a polyphonic crime drama, premiered at the Barbican in May this year. Again conceived by John La Bouchardière, it presents the unsettling music of Carlo Gesualdo in a series of ‘crime scenes’. Forthcoming projects include Carnevale Veneziano (Monteverdi to Monty Python), the release of Draw On Sweet Night (a film and CD about John Wilbye), BBC broadcasts, two Wigmore Hall concerts, a semi-staged production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo in Venice, a new Bach collaboration with Circa and, for Monteverdi’s anniversary in 2017, Monteverdi on the Move. I Fagiolini’s next recording project for Decca, Amuse-bouche, includes the world premiere of Jean Francaix’s Ode à la Gastronomie and an arrangement for piano and voices by Roderick Williams of the slow movement from Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G. The name I Fagiolini continues to be misspelt and mispronounced wherever it goes, from Africa to Australia, In 2005 the group was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Ensemble Prize. It has recorded 20 CDs and four DVDs and is delighted to be Ensemble-in-Residence at the University of York. Robert Hollingworth Robert Hollingworth specialises in Renaissance and contemporary repertoire (notably Monteverdi) and in creating ground-breaking projects which present music to audiences in innovative ways. He founded I Fagiolini in 1986; with them he has presented their signature projects including Simunye, The Full Monteverdi, Tallis in Wonderland, How LiKe an Angel and Betrayal. He has also directed Accentus (France), the North German Radio Choir, Nederlands Kamerkoor, Wroclaw Philharmonic Choir, Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra (Judas Maccabaeus), The English Concert (Purcell) and the Academy of Ancient Music (Bach). Robert Hollingworth writes and presents for BBC Radio 3 (CD Review, The Early Music Show, The Choir and Discovering Music). In 2010 he delivered the Lufthansa Lecture, entitled ‘Monteverdi the Modern Man’, and spoke at the European Early Music Network (REMA) conference. He has worked on a number of films including Quills. In 2011, his world premiere recording of Striggio’s (until recently) lost Mass in 40 Parts was released on Decca with an all-star UK line-up, remaining at the top of the specialist classical chart for nearly four months and winning the 2011 Gramophone Early Music Award and a Diapason d’or de l’année. His latest recording, 1612 Italian Vespers, released on Decca Classics in June 2012, was chosen as Gramophone CD of the month. He recently arranged the music for the album ShaKespeare: The Sonnets and appeared extensively on BBC TV and radio discussing the disc. Robert Hollingworth gives masterclasses and residencies throughout Europe. He ran a conducting masterclass and lecture for the American Choral Directors’ Association at their 2012 conference and has just set-up a new Master of Arts program in solo-voice-ensemble music at the University of York, where he is a Reader in Music. From I Fagiolini’ Musical Director, Robert Hollingworth. This programme gives us a taste of home after several weeks away. England has an unbroken tradition of singing in parts for pleasure going back centuries and this evening's entertainment revels in that. There is beauty, silliness and wistfulness in almost equal measure. Much of this repertoire was written to give pleasure to those singing it, a much underestimated feature of choral singing. Britten picked up on this in writing his 'Sacred and Profane'. It's graphically descriptive of the amazing texts and fun to sing - if quite demanding! My personal favourite is Thomas Tomkins' 'Too much I once lamented' which is just searingly beautiful and one of the most perfect pieces for voices I know. However I'll be looking forward to the end of the concert and some Flanders & Swann, songs I was brought up on. Program: This is a trip through English secular music of the last 500 years. It’s not intended to be inclusive of course but it aims to give a flavour of the pleasure that the English have always had in singing in parts – and particularly singing with just one voice to a part. This has always existed at amateur level although professionally it has come and gone. When I set up my first singing group at the age of 16, it was very much a solo-voice ensemble I wanted to sing in – and not another choir (much as I love the world of choirs). There is something wonderful about the combination of expressing yourself as an individual yet being part of a team: shaping your line, yet being influenced by all the other parts. We begin with music from the early 16th century and a composer writing for the court of the young and highly artistic Henry VIII. William Cornyshe was a poet, dramatist, actor and composer - a true Renaissance man. The words he has set by John Skelton are imagined words of Christ on the cross. Yet this is not a sacred motet but part of a large body of 16th European century music on a sacred subject matter yet meant for spiritual contemplation away from church, rather than as part of the liturgy. We follow it with a very different secular song (but from the same time) which recounts a dialogue between a lord of the manor and a pretty country maid. He tries very hard to get his way but she seems very concerned as to what her mother will say about it. We then jump to a golden age of English music, the short flowering of the English madrigal, 1590- 1620. Farmer’s piece is perhaps what everyone thinks of as the English madrigal while Wilbye and Tomkins’ are more sophisticated, beautifully blending light textures with passing dissonance. Thomas Ravenscroft’s music is from the same time, but he had a particular interest in setting popular/street tunes in the sophisticated garb of music in parts. English history took a violent turn between this time and the time of Henry Purcell, some 60 years later, with a civil war. Yet when Purcell came to prominence, as well as looking around Europe to contemporary musical fashion, he also looked back to the previous Golden Age and to our great love of singing for pleasure and in parts. ‘When the cock begins to crow’ is a silly trio but great fun while the ‘catches’ are from a body of social songs written to be sung in pubs for the amusement primarily of those singing them. Please do not feel you have to enjoy them yourselves. Referring to 18th century English music through a single glee (about silly birds) we will draw a discrete veil over this time in England. Italian music was otherwise the rage yet through the period, singing in parts continued - of both Renaissance and contemporary repertoire. In the 19th century, Robert Lucas Pearsall took a great interest in music of the later Renaissance and helped set up a choir called The Bristol Madrigal Society which still continues today under a different name.