Wroclaw Baroque Ensemble

Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh - 16/08/25

 Wrocław Baroque Ensemble, Andrzej Kosendiak (conductor, artistic director)

 Sung in Latin with English surtitles, the award-winning Wrocław Baroque Ensemble brought an epic 17th-century Polish choral piece by Mikołaj Zieleński to life at the Queen’s Hall, performing on historically accurate instruments. This was a rare treat, curated wonderfully by conductor and artistic director Andrzej Kosendiak, a key figure in his nation’s musical life and heritage.

 The mission of the Ensemble revolves around reacreating the sounds of Renaissance Poland both for audiences in their own country and worldwide. While an expanding repertoire of Italian, German, French, Flemish and English works is performed globally these days, Poland’s contribution to this fascinating and formative era deserves to be far better known, and if the response to tonight’s performance is anything to go by it would be well received.

 Indeed that is already proving the case, with the Wroclaw gaining a reputation for first-class performance and dedication to communicating important but neglected works well outside their native land.

 Founded in 2006 by their current conductor, the WBO is a resident ensemble of the Witold Lutosławski National Forum of Music. Their recordings include Haydn: The Seasons (2017) a collaboration with Paul McCreesh and his Gabrieli Consort and Players, as well as 17th-Century Sacred Music in Wrocław, recorded with Gli Angeli Genève and Concerto Palatino.

 This morning the focus was on the latter, spotlighting a selection of fifteen excerpts from his substantial Offertoria et Communiones totius anni, a group of 117 individual pieces dating from 1611 and ranging in mood from celebratory to solemn. This was followed by Vesperae in Visitatione Beatae Mariae Virginis, by Marcin Józef Żebrowski (1710-1792), which the WBO recorded in 2022.

 Part of both the ‘Polish Focus’ within EIF and a broader UK/Poland Season, showcasing cultural exchange between the two countries, the WBO features two sopranos, two countertenors, two tenors and two basses alongside an instrumental ensemble that features two violins, viola, viola da gamba, cello, harp, chest organ, harpsichord, theorbo (a large, plucked string instrument from the lute family, with an extended neck and two pegboxes), cornet, dulcian (a precursor to the bassoon, featuring a double reed and a folded conical bore) and three trombones (alto, tenor and bass).

 The resulting sound is rich, round and polyphonous with some distinctive resonances, timbres and textures coming from the instruments which will be less familiar to modern audiences, plus the earlier manifestations of well-known ones. Zieleński (1560-1620) left a relatively small legacy of work from his forty years of productivity, but what has survived is full of charm and vitality.

 The WBO captured the spirit of this previously overlooked masterpiece beautifully in their carefully constructed performance. The Żebrowski Vesperae, meanwhile, receives its character especially from a series of haunting antiphons. The singing throughout was warm and multi-layered, blending well with the instruments to provide some memorable consonances and contrasts.

photo credit: Jess Shurte eif