King’s Singers take flight
The King’s Singers. Michael Fowler Centre, March 13.
It might be a fairy tale: six songbirds flew into the Michael Fowler Centre and charmed the audience.
But that was what actually happened on Wednesday, as the King’s Singers performed at the Festival of the Arts for the second time in recent memory, following their triumphal 2018 visit.
Bass Jonathan Howard delighted the audience straight off the cuff with some words spoken in te reo Māori, before the group kicked into what was – to use another local idiom – a concert of two halves. The first explicitly bore out the concert’s Songbirds theme. Although it began tentatively, with an underwhelming rendition of the Beatles classic Blackbird, the concert soon kicked into gear.
The Canadian folk song She’s like the Swallow was both affecting and a stunning display of musicianship, followed shortly by a cuckoo-themed “nonsense madrigal” by Ligeti that can only be described as pleasantly bonkers.
Not long after came a contender for the concert’s highpoint, an excerpt from
Ravel’s Trois Chansons that evoked the traditional lament of young women whose lovers have gone to war.
Their voices soaring and swooping like birds, and their ensemble work perfectly shaped, the King’s Singers delivered a performance of exquisite and refined beauty.
A varied first half also featured some classic delights, including the rich harmonies of Edward Johnson’s Renaissance song Come, Blessed Bird and the sweet simplicity of Jacob Arcadelt’s 1539 piece Il Bianco e Dolce Cigno.
As is the King’s Singers’ wont, the more serious numbers were cleverly alternated with comic songs.
These included another Renaissance classic, the delightful Le Chant des Oiseaux, in which the six singers combined to convincingly imitate a menagerie of birds, their vocal work propelled by the piece’s absurd wind-uptoy energy.
Stranger still – in the best possible sense of the term – was Australian composer Malcolm Williamson’s The Musicians of Bremen. Despite the song’s origin, it was a reminder of just how impeccably English the King’s Singers are.
Shamelessly playing up the song’s comic caricatures of dogs, cockerels and the like, and drawing on a quasipantomime energy, the performance spoke to the quintessential English desire to not take everything too seriously, to always leaven the heavier fare with something lighter.
The concert’s second half, stretching the ‘Songbirds’ theme to breaking point, was a smorgasbord of pieces from some of the group’s favourite and (mostly) modern writers.
A rendition of The Bare Necessities sparkled and swung, while New Zealand baritone Christopher Bruerton and tenor Julian Gregory showcased their talents on, respectively, the caressingly melancholic Loch Lomond and the plaintive, heartfelt Father, Father.
Solo talents aside, the group are justly famed for the purity, clarity and technical excellence of their ensemble singing, and this was delivered in spades. Complex harmonies and intervals were made to sound effortless, the vocal colour was nuanced and varied, and the group’s celebrated calm and vibrato-free sound never failed to delight.
All these qualities were immaculately displayed in the encore number, a transcendently beautiful arrangement of the Billy Joel song And So It Goes.
One of the group’s most popular recent numbers, it was a fitting end to a fine concert.