theartsdesk in York: York Early Music Festival

York is a bit like Oxford, I’ve always thought: that perplexing contrast between the central squares and marketplaces, in all their twee glory – all aimless, besatchelled French students and anoraked tourists queuing for tea at Betty’s – and the simply glorious architecture and hidden back streets, from the ever-breathtaking splendour of the Minster to the endless succession of tiny hidden churches that inhabit every other corner. You could, potentially, hate it, but you always come away feeling pleasantly surprised, and surprisingly inspired.

And it’s a good place to hold an early music festival. The venues – mainly, but not all, churches – offer a seemingly infinite variety of atmosphere and size, so each programme can be fitted to its building. Nowhere is particularly far to go, so you can book a hotel in the centre and amble to the next gig without worrying about buses or trains. You begin to make some sense of the maze of streets. You start to feel like you’re a part of the city. It’s all rather pleasant.

The York Early Music Festival is Britain’s biggest. It has been running since 1977 and has developed into one of the most respected festivals of its kind throughout the world. This year’s theme (not something I’m always terribly keen on – but York seems to come up with better ideas than most) was "musical marriage", and refreshingly most ensembles had appeared to think carefully on the subject, offering considered and intriguing programmes. The Italian Ensemble Lucidarum took the theme literally with a programme celebrating an imaginary Jewish wedding in Renaissance Italy. A succession of 15th-century works took us from the arrival of the bride and groom, through ritual baths and the wedding ceremony to the celebration of the guests, and the moment the bride and groom disappear to consummate the marriage (with the guests still next door – God, the pressure!).

Accompanying the ensemble was a pair of dancers, resplendent in 15th-century dress, who gave us a courtly impression of the marriage, in many dances following choreography from the period. Normally this is the sort of thing that makes me want to eat my own arm – I simply can’t stand it – so it’s testament to Bruna Goldoni and Marco Bendoni that if there was perhaps a tad too much of the far-off look in evidence and not a great amount of what surely would have been huge sexual tension, by and large they were convincing, and eventually rather engaging.

The music provided the highlights, however. Led by Avery Gosfield on recorder, pipe and tabor and Francis Biggi on lute and colascione, there was a naturalness and relaxedness to their performance that was immensely pleasing. As much as possible in the (unusually for the festival) fairly drab surroundings of York University’s Jack Lyons Hall, they managed to create the impression of a band turning up to do a wedding gig and having a decent amount of fun at the same time. Singer Enrico Fink was guttural but charming, and gently amusing as the seriousness of the wedding ceremony gave way to the rather more rowdy evening celebrations.

The following day offered a concert of unexpected delights. I can’t say I know a great deal about the Italian 15th-century frottola repertoire, but it was here performed alone by the drastically named VivaBiancaLuna Biffi, who accompanied herself on viola d’arco. The concert, comprising 23 songs, was performed entirely from memory, with virtuosic accompaniment surely comparable in difficulty to some of Bach’s unaccompanied violin sonatas and partitas. It was a consummate performance, Biffi’s voice was rich but clear, and her telling of the story drew in the listener. The songs were formed to create a three-act monologue on the lover’s gaze, scorn and surrender. Rather more cynical poems framed the acts, commenting on human mortality and vain hope. Brilliantly conceived as a programme, the performance was no less exciting.

The York Early Music Festival has long had connections to Harewood House, and viol consort Fretwork performed a concert of the old and the new in the grand, if not acoustically perfect, surroundings of the Gallery. Orlando Gough’s The World Encompassed, a celebration of Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe, was the meat of the concert: an 11-movement work that was interspersed with viol music by composers of the period Robert Parsons, John Taverner, Luys Milán, Alonso Mudarra and Christopher Tye. Drake was accompanied on his successful round-the-world trip by a consort of viol players, and while no records survive of what was played, the pieces included here were some of the best-loved works of the day.

Gough’s work, though it takes at times a number of tunes from the period, including sea shanties and the Old 100th hymn tune, is wholly modern in character, using a variety of playing techniques and exploiting the surprisingly sonorous pizzicato sound from the six-part viol consort. In turns expansive and airy (crossing the Pacific), dryly humorous (homesickness), manically fast (Cape Verde) or funkily hip (a sultry pseudo-Tango for South America), the music was never boring, though perhaps there was at times an over-reliance on ostinatos that began to pale after a while. Fretwork was more than up to the challenges of the piece. Together, the players make an impressive sound that is much more than the sum of its parts. Most certainly one not just for the early music lover.

The London-based Bach Players were disappointing in a concert that married the French and Italian baroque styles: pieces by Lully, D’Anglebert, Rebel, de Visée, Muffat, Corelli, Pasquini and François Couperin were not always performed with the style with which we have become accustomed to hear in this music. Top of the pile was theorbo player Jakob Lindberg, but tuning problems and a lack of fizz meant this concert never really got off the ground.

The festival lasts for just over one week, and though prior commitments meant that I was unable to attend everything, my final day proved to be a highlight. BBC New Generation Artist Mahan Esfahani is a harpsichordist I first came across at a festival in Tuscany. I was blown away by his elegant, witty performances of Scarlatti sonatas – as was Gustav Leonhardt, who was in the audience. When a harpsichord legend like Leonhardt pricks up his ears it’s worth paying attention, and fortunately for British fans a fellowship at New College, Oxford has meant more UK performances for Esfahani. This concert incorporated musical marriages of style from the Bauyn manuscript, currently housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris: a toccata by Froberger, an anonymous passacaille and a collection of works by Louis Couperin. An unmeasured prelude from the latter collection showed Esfahani at his best, with a wonderfully even touch, highly effective changes in articulation, and a general joie de vivre that even the serious title of the work – a homage to Froberger – could not mask.

A suite: Il maritaggio di Giacomo, by Bach’s predecessor in Leipzig, Johann Kuhnau, gave a more literal nod to the marriage theme. Programmatic from beginning to end, with varying degrees of musical success, the most effective movement was possibly the hardest emotion to convey; “The Deception of Laban” was hestitant, free in form, with slippery melodic lines and unexpected harmonic turns. The music of Bach finished the programme: the English Suite No 2 in A minor. In a work vastly more well known than the other pieces, Esfahani’s thoughtful, occasionally forceful, and ultimately vital performance gave cause to listen to the suite in a new light.

The largest audience of the week was to be found in York Minster for a concert by the Sixteen that was part of their 10th-anniversary choral pilgrimage. This year’s theme was “Ceremony and Devotion: Music for the Tudors” and included works by William Byrd, Thomas Tallis and John Sheppard. Sheppard’s magnum opus is the incredible Media vita, which has had something of a renaissance in recent years.

The Sixteen’s performance of this magnificent, 20-minute epic was a shade on the quick side to be truly magisterial; they could have let the cavernous acoustics of the Minster work rather harder for them than they allowed, but the rest of the programme was quite excellent, a particular highlight being Tallis’s little-known Miserere nostri, where the choir showed what happens when a great ensemble of singers really hits the heights. With tuning so true the harmonics were beginning to sound above them, this mesmerising motet was a particularly rich jewel in a crown of superbly performed exquisite music.

• Check out the York Early Music Christmas Festival 2010
• Check out theartsdesk's early music highlights at this year's BBC Proms festival