Washington Post
January 14, 2008
Folger Consort
Once a season, the Folger Consort
leaves its intimate home at the
Folger Shakespeare Library's Elizabethan Theatre and totes its
delights to the vastness of
Washington National Cathedral. On Friday at the cathedral (and again
Saturday), the Consort's guest performers -- the vocal ensemble Orpheus
and the wind band Piffaro -- collaborated in a program of music of 16th-
and early 17th-century
Spain that featured Tomas Luis de Victoria's Requiem framed by much
earthier sets of instrumental dances and variations by the composer's
contemporaries.
There's not a wobble anywhere among the 12 voices of the Orpheus ensemble. Under Philip Cave's unobtrusive direction, they sing with a straight (but not straitjacketed) ease that sustains long lines effortlessly, keeps textures clear and interesting, and allows for astonishing balance. Cave wisely doubled his bass singers with a bassoon, which helped keep the pitch nailed down. If they'd been performing in the Elizabethan Theatre, it's likely that we all could have heard the texts clearly, but then we would have missed the magic that happens when clean polyphony floats through resonant space.
Victoria's music is like Palestrina-with-passion: The serenity is there but there are moments of urgency and exhilaration that make it both more human and more mystical. Orpheus projected all that beautifully with gorgeous intonations, individual lines that seemed pulled up inexorably from within the six-part sonority, and wonderfully rhythmic moments in the "Domine Jesu Christe" Offertory.
Piffaro's seven musicians, who play an assortment of sackbuts, recorders, shawms, guitars and harps, offered a foil to Victoria's mysticism. Arranged variously in loud or soft groupings (and joined sometimes by Folger Consort Director Robert Eisenstein on assorted viols), they collaborated by turn in comfortable wind sonorities or chased each other through intricate feats of ornamentation.
To open and close the program, the two ensembles joined forces on luscious motets by Philippe Rogier.