A SALAD FOR ALL SEASONS
Why Insalata? The title—Italian for “salad“—makes perfect sense once you’ve heard this extraordinary disc from I Fagiolini. Robert Hollingworth’s ensemble tosses together five centuries of vocal music with the kind of insouciant confidence that could easily have produced indigestion but instead delivers something remarkably nourishing.
The programming is audacious. Gombert rubs shoulders with Sondheim. Purcell meets Britten. A scrap of Mateo da Flecha’s La Bomba sits alongside the third movement of Bach’s motet “Singet dem Herrn“—and somehow it all coheres. This isn’t one of those dutiful survey recordings where you can feel the gears grinding between stylistic epochs. The singers move from Janequin’s “La Chasse” (just the second part, mind you) to Debussy’s exquisite Orléans setting “Dieu! qu’il la fait bon regarder” with the ease of people changing conversational topics at dinner.
I Fagiolini—the name comes from a late Renaissance Italian ensemble, not green beans—consists of six voices here, though the forces expand judiciously for certain pieces. What strikes you immediately is the timbral blend: these voices lock together with the kind of precision the King’s Singers achieved in their prime, but there’s more textural variety, more chiaroscuro. The women’s voices add a lustrous sheen that all-male groups obviously can’t match, and in the Monteverdi—both the madrigal “Vago augeletto” and the echo-motet “Audi coelum“—that matters enormously.
The anonymous sixteenth-century “Hey trolly loly lo” arrives like a cold shower. Hollingworth has his singers adopt what the original liner notes charmingly call “appalling Mummerset accents,” and the effect is deliberately, gloriously vulgar. It’s music-making that doesn’t take itself too seriously—a quality that serves them well in the contemporary repertoire later on.
Speaking of which: Roderick Williams’s sonnet setting and William Brooks’s “Nellie was a lady” represent the disc’s riskiest gambit. The Williams piece (he also arranged the Sondheim that closes the program) has wit and craft, though it doesn’t quite stick in the memory the way the earlier material does. Brooks, on the other hand, goes for broke—gospel inflections, close-harmony parody, vocal pyrotechnics that would make the Swingles blush. It’s tremendous fun, if slightly exhausting.
But the real treasure here is Robin Blaze in Purcell’s “Sweeter than roses.” Elizabeth Kenny’s theorbo provides the most tender support imaginable, and Blaze—still early in what would become a distinguished career—sings with a purity and directness that’s almost unbearably moving. The ornaments grow organically from the melodic line; there’s no showing off, just profound understanding of the idiom. That two minutes and forty-three seconds would justify the purchase price alone.
The disc, made at St. Silas in Chalk Farm over two days in February 1994, captures the voices with admirable naturalness. No close-miking tricks, no artificial bloom. You hear the actual acoustic of the space—not ideal for everything on the program, perhaps, but honest.
Does the disc fall between stools? The original reviewer worried about that, and you can see why. Early music specialists might balk at the eclecticism; fans of contemporary vocal music might not want to wade through all that Renaissance polyphony to get to the Brooks. But I think the programming works precisely because it refuses to pander to any single constituency. This is vocal music, period—from Gombert to Sondheim, all of it sung with intelligence and affection.
The only real complaint: at sixty-four minutes, it’s over too soon. You want more—more Monteverdi, more Britten, more of everything. But perhaps that’s the point of a good salad. Leave them wanting seconds.
This is ensemble singing of the highest order, and Insalata remains—nearly three decades after its release—a model of what thoughtful programming and superb musicianship can achieve. Highly recommended.
