VoxCarnyx

St John’s Kirk, Perth/Perth Concert Hall

COME August, the Edinburgh International Festival will see the new collaboration by Owain Park’s precision vocal group Gesualdo Six and American director Bill Barclay’s Concert Theatre Works, Death of Gesualdo, in the Queen’s Hall.

So it was helpful that Perth Festival hosted two performances of the partnership’s previous show, Secret Byrd, created for the 400^th anniversary of the death of composer William Byrd in 2023. It was also a major undertaking for director Helen Band and her volunteer board, who had to source almost all the props and staging and transform the city centre St John’s Kirk for the production – as well as masterminding the front-of-house arrangements for what was a superb promenade show.

With viol consort Fretwork providing the instrumental interludes from Byrd’s catalogue, the chief musical ingredients were the four and five-part Mass settings he wrote for clandestine services, as a Recusant Catholic himself. Hearing such powerful a cappella singing in the Kirk’s intimate acoustic was an utter joy, and – although they were referring to suitably antique-looking scores – the costumed choristers clearly know this music backwards now and blend together beautifully.

Secret Byrd is much more than a concert, the whole point being to recreate the tension and the dangers Roman Catholics faced during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, even if her majesty turned a benign blind eye to the beliefs of her favourite court composer for many years.

What was flagged as “Interruption” in the online programme, around two thirds through the sequence, could have been gunshots or just hammering at the door, but candles are extinguished and the priest bundled into hiding as the music stopped. Some of the audience members recruited to make up the table of twelve at the heart of the action look as alarmed as the performers.

The danger passed and the programme continued with counter-tenor Guy James delivering Byrd’s Elegy on the death of Thomas Tallis (Ye Sacred Muses). This immersive experience included soup and bread and a thimble-full of communion wine for all, and the musicians went about the business of bringing everyone into the story with practiced ease.

This year’s EIF programme also includes what has become a regular residency at The Hub by the Aga Khan Music Programme and its mission to share the classical music of other cultures was brought to mind by the Perth Festival’s opening day music in Perth Concert Hall from The Ayoub Sisters. Laura and Sarah may have grown up in Scotland but they use their conservatoire training on violin and cello to delve into their Egyptian and Arab heritage.

Others have gone down this road before them, notably Yo-Yo Ma with his Silk Road Project (after he had made his reputation with mainstream Western classical music), the Aga Khan Master Musicians, and even the flirtation with the sound of the souk by post-Led Zeppelin Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. The Ayoub Sisters used basic modern technology to make their less well-funded journey from a suburban Glasgow bedroom.

Their Saturday evening concert found them in the context of a quartet with the guitar of Giulio Romano Malaisi and the drum kit of Giovanni Velez – a last minute dep for their usual percussionist but you would never have known that had Laura not spilled the beans.

The crowd-pleasers were dispensed with early, culminating in a breakneck “Summer” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, before a focus on their meticulously-sourced original repertoire, much of it taken from their self-released (post-Decca) Arabesque album.

There is a maturity to what the sisters are doing now that assuredly deserves investment – both from audiences as well as producers. This date was part of their ongoing tenth anniversary tour, so a sense of summing-up what they have done so far was appropriate. What is more exciting, however, is what they might go on to do now.

Keith Bruce