The Gesualdo Six, Wishing Tree, North Wales International Music Festival, St Asaph Cathedral | 11 September 2026 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review by David Gray & Paul Gray

The Gesualdo Six, Wishing Tree,

North Wales International Music Festival, St Asaph Cathedral | 11 September 2026

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review by David Gray & Paul Gray

“An exquisitely polished gem of a concert.”

Music by: Byrd, David Bednall, Vaughan Williams, Alison Willis, Christen Holmes, Joby Talbot, Stanford, Gordon Langford, Anna Semple, Owain Park, James Whitbourne, Josquin des Prez, Orlando Gibbons, Sarah Rimkus, Poulenc, Blake Morgan

Drawing on their album, ‘The Wishing Tree’ The Gesualdo Six delivered a diverse programme of music which included modern settings of folk songs, contemporary compositions, and established classics from the Renaissance. This collection of pieces, rich with reflections on nature, chimed perfectly with the theme of this year’s North Wales International Music Festival – Macrocosm: Music and Conservation.

The emphasis on natural imagery, particularly that of trees - and specifically the apple tree - created a sense that, rather than a random collection of pieces, this was a unified whole. So, while the concert’s route took in composers as diverse as Poulenc and Byrd, it was a journey with a definite plan, and a satisfying feeling of arrival at the end.

The ensemble’s six highly skilled and gifted singers clearly have a deep rapport with one another. The unanimity of their starts of pieces - and of sections therein - together with perfect tuning, placing of consonants, exquisite diction, approach to dynamics, phrasing, and manipulation of the unique spatial environment of the Cathedral is remarkable. The sound is exquisitely blended. They phrase as one and have an intuitive understanding of when to stand out and when to stand back in the ensemble.

All the above is to be expected from a top-flight vocal ensemble. However, they seem to have developed all these basic constituent skills to an astonishing degree.

But their excellence goes beyond this. They each sing with a distinct character and bring to bear their own personalities and a deeply personal understanding of the music. This is achieved in a completely collegiate way, so that their individual distinctiveness is at one with the unity of the ensemble. The result: an authentic and emotionally compelling style of performance practice.

The attention to detail is complete - as is their engagement with the words and music as equal partners. They also have a collective talent for storytelling. As a result, their performances are like listening to six gifted lieder singers telling a song-story together, and with total unanimity of purpose. The result is rich, engrossing and rewarding.

This was a concert programme where no individual number was anything less than perfectly polished, or intelligent and profoundly expressive. Tenor, Joseph Wicks deserves a special mention for his gorgeous solo in Stanford’s The Blue Bird. But all these six singers have stand-out voices and all the solo lines were quite lovely.

This was as a real gem of a concert and a feather in the cap for this remarkable Festival.

Guy James – Countertenor

Alasdair Austin – Countertenor

Joseph Wicks – Tenor

Josh Cooter – Tenor

Simon Grant – Baritone

Owain Park – Director & Bass