BREMF – Celebrating Food, Wine and Song – The Orlando Consort

Medieval music, food and wine can make you quite merry. The Orlando Consort wanted a relaxed atmosphere and they generated a really lovely party. They performed some of the most exquisitely complicated music ever with an assured yet relaxed mastery. Just four men with distinct and perfectly balanced voices singing so beautifully in umpteen medieval languages and dialects: it could have been deeply ‘academic’ but instead it was genuinely convivial and even quite bawdy. These 800-400 year-old tunes provoked tears of both regret and jollity. It certainly proves that this early music has a lot of life left in it!

St George’s Church, Brighton, 9 November 2012
Rating:
Andrew Connal