Reining in the Donkey - University Choir, The 24 and The City Musick

Brinsley took part in this concert of the “Colossal Baroque” in Central Hall, in which the University of York Choir and The 24 were joined by the period instruments of The City Musick (cornett, sackbut, dulcian, strings, organs and theorbos) under Robert Hollingworth. At its centre was Orazio Benevoli’s Missa Si Deus Pro Nobis, written for multiple choirs with continuo, alongside music by his Venetian teacher Vincenzo Ugolini and other composers of seventeenth-century Rome.

The concert took its title from a curious device in which the lower parts move quickly beneath a static soprano line, supposedly like a priest trying to rein in a frenetic donkey.¹

Programme

Orazio Benevoli Missa Si Deus Pro Nobis
Vincenzo Ugolini Quae est ista
Andrea Gabrieli, Palestrina (arr. Soriano) and Frescobaldi and other works from seventeenth-century Rome

Conductor: Robert Hollingworth

Steve Crowther called it “a highly imaginative programme” and singled out The 24 as “a choir clearly at the top of their game, with crystal-clear part singing throughout. Very impressive.” Catherine Pierron’s Frescobaldi on the chamber organ was “breathtaking”, and the closing Agnus Dei “luxurious, quite delightful”.²