I Fagiolini: A Life in A Cappella

Aberlady Parish Church, 9/9/2025

 I Fagiolini, director, Robert Hollingsworth

This was the third I Fagiolini concert I went to this year in the Lammermuir Festival, and I think it might be my favourite. With the title, ‘A Life in A Cappella’, amusingly subtitled ‘We’re not dead yet’, another Monty Python reference (after the Fish-Slapping dance in Dido), it set out to show the range that a top a cappella group can demonstrate. ‘A Cappella’ means basically ‘unaccompanied’ and this concert covered an extraordinary repertoire from Elizabethan madrigals to brand new modern compositions.

The founder and director, Robert Hollingsworth, has proved a mercurial figure in all the concerts, sometimes directing, sometimes singing or playing, and always introducing the items on the programme with a mixture of erudition and sparkling wit. He has a marvellous twinkle in his eye which is enormously endearing. The subtitle, ‘We’re not dead yet’, alludes to the fact that the group has been performing at the highest level for nearly 40 years. Indeed one of today’s sopranos, Anna Crooks, was also a founding member, and the bass, Charles Gibbs, goes back a long way as well.

In his programme notes, Robert Hollingsworth explains quite a lot about the group and its place in the history of early music performance over the last 50 years.

Today’s concert, to a packed house in the cosy setting of Aberlady Parish Church, was a sparkling display of wonderful close harmony singing, taken to an extra level by the sheer sense of enjoyment on the part of the singers. It was immediately clear that the eight singers (plus occasionally Mr Hollingsworth) were having a terrific time, showing that technical excellence need not preclude fun!

They started with a magnificent setting of Alma Redemptoris Mater (Loving Mother of our Redeemer) by the Spanish Renaissance composer, Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611), whose gorgeous harmonies were superbly rendered by I Fagiolini. The first half saw madrigals by John Wilbye and Thomas Weelkes, the Bad Boy of the English Renaissance, whose drunken exploits were to see him frequently suspended from his post as organist and choirmaster at Chichester Cathedral for swearing and blaspheming, and worse! The half ended with some superb Monteverdi madrigals, although for me the highlights were a vocal rendition of a set of bells by Ludwig Senfl and a crazy section of sung Commedia dell’ Arte by Orazio Vecchi, in which the voices of the comedy troupe were yelled out with full nasal effect. Hilarious!

The second half was all 20th century and later and demonstrated how good these singers are at tightly controlled a cappella singing. Herbert Howells’ setting ‘The Summer is Coming, ’an extended work of intricate beauty showed off the voices of Anna Crookes, Rebecca Lea, Martha McLorinan, Tania Murphy, Matthew Long, Jacob Ewens, Greg Skidmore and Charles Gibb to wonderful effect. There were comic songs, like Joanna Marsh’s ‘Geocentric’ about decay and rot, whose pungent scents almost reached the audience, and some smooth French songs by Danie Jean Yves Lesur.

Everything was done with panache and sensitivity, and the concert closed with a fabulous encore ‘Woah la Shona’ by Bheka Dlamini, which got the whole audience purring. Terrific stuff!