Bold choice proves a winner
The Perth Festival of the Arts 2021 concert of The Gesualdo Six took place on Tuesday, May 25 in the somewhat unusual venue of the sunken, furniture gallery at Perth Art Gallery and Museum.
The space had been emptied of its usual exhibits and adorned with busts and statues.
In this predominantly white setting they had lit the busts and architectural features with an odd lurid pink giving a disembodied, hallucinatory effect.
In inviting The Gesualdo Six, the committee of Perth Festival had made a bold and supremely successful choice. Madrigals are a refined and not too often encountered programme choice. That the six male singers from counter tenor to deep bass were all enthusiasts goes without saying, but their sheer quality of blend and security must be without parallel.
Starting with Tromboncino’s Frotolla (a predecessor to the madrigal) – Viva Amor, we encountered the basic theme of the evening: love, pain and death.
Indeed, all apart from the second, Verdelot’s Italia mia – a hymning of his love for his country – showed various aspects of this, developing in allegory and complexity.
Moving through the 12 composers, time and again the beauty of voice, absolute justness of intonation and commitment shone through.
Through Palestrina, Striggio and Marenzio the pain of love, love compared to the light of the sun, the imprisonment of love were all developed.
Reaching their namesake, Gesualdo works early and late were compared: the tumbling lines of the joys of spring (with Nymphs and Shepherds) and the darker longing – Alone and in misery – all in the most beautiful sound.
Aleotti’s setting of a sonnet on Sleep had the most extraordinary combinations of sounds of voices.
But finally came the culmination in Monteverdi, where you heard that there was so much going on.
It was an extraordinary concert with virtuoso performance and effect and though others are yet to be heard, it could be the very best of this year’s Festival of the Arts.