Hilliard Ensemble @ BEMF

The Hilliard Ensemble's set on Friday night of the festival was a two-part program under the title A Hilliard Songbook  -- a core sample of the repertoire, the songbook itself by now being pretty extensive. The first half was devoted to settings of Plutarch from the 14th to the 16th centuries, from Jacopo da Bologna through Dufay and Pisano to Giaches de Wert. The second half was made up of a broad span of sacred works ranging chronologically from the 11th century (Three Hymns of St Godric) to the present (Arvo Pärt) and geographically from England (Ah! Gentle Jesu of Sheryngham) to Armenia (Sharakans).

For the most part it was a fine performance and of course the church was packed. It did take the Hilliards a while to warm up -- counter-tenor David James in particular, though once he did he sounded great. (It may be that putting Bologna's Non al suo amante, in which he features, at the beginning of the program did him no favors. It might have been wiser to move that piece to the end of the half.) And there were a few moments when things seemed to go inadvertently microtonal for everybody, though I wouldn't rule out Emmanuel's vaulted, reverberant space making it tricky to hear the person standing next to you while making every detail fantastically audible to people fifty feet away.

Nevertheless, by the second half things seemed to have fallen into place.  The Jan Garbarek-less Sharakans was a particular standout (my notes read "boss!!" after this one). They closed the second half with Perotin's Viderunt omnes -- my notes here read "groovy! like Swingle Singers doing Bells of St Genevieve". fwiw.  The lyrically simple but chordally intricate Most Holy Mother of God, Save Us saw the Hilliard's large and enthusiastic audience off into the dark.