Singers who sensationally topped the charts with a 450-year-old lost composition are to sing part of the masterpiece at the North Wales International Music Festival.
I Fagiolini, who specialise in Renaissance music, leapt to No1 in the specialist classical chart in March, even knocking the ever-popular Dutch violinist and Waltz king, Andre Rieu, off his perch.
They even raced into the pop charts beating the likes of Duffy, Bon Jovi and Eminem.
The group will be among the stars at the North Wales International Music Festival which is being held at St Asaph Cathedral between September 24 and October 1.
I Fagiolini – yes, it is the Italian for a string bean – will sing Caro dolce ben mio from its best-selling CD, and first ever commercial recording of Alessandro Striggio’s 1566 mass for 40 voices.
The piece was wrongly catalogued at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris until rediscovered five years ago and given its first modern performance at the BBC Proms in London in 2007.
“We really worked hard so that there could be a properly magnificent and extravagant sound world for the piece to revel in,” I Fagiolini’s conductor and founder Robert Hollingworth, 44, said of the release.
Striggio, who lived from 1536/7 to 1592, was a court composer to the Medici family in Florence and would have written the mass in 40 parts because, as Hollingworth put it, the Medicis liked to “make a big stink and money wasn’t a problem.”
He describes the Striggio piece as “a thumping good piece of music.”
Now the music can be heard in the amazing acoustics of St Asaph Cathedral, where North Wales composer William Mathias launched the festival in 1972 to attract the very best in musical talent to the region.
I Fagiolini was created in Oxford by Robert Hollingworth in 1986 and the performance in St Asaph will be part of the silver jubilee celebrations for a group which is the only early music ensemble ever to win the Royal Philharmonic’s Ensemble prize (2005). The full group has 10 singers and five musicians who play lute, harpsichord, organ and harp.
Richard Hollingworth, who also presents programmes for BBC Radio 3, and who started his music career as chorister in Hereford Cathedral, claims he is equally influenced by Monteverdi and Monty Python.
He has worked on a number of films including Quills where he tried and failed to make Joaquim Phoenix look like a real conductor.
Certainly I Fagiolini’s North Wales programme will include pretty diverse material, with Striggio, a Monteverdi madrigal from 1614, but also 20th Century pieces from Lennon and McCartney’s Obladee Obladah and Duke Ellington’s It don’t mean a thing.
I Fagiolini has enjoyed truly international success having performed all over the world from Hong Kong, China, Morocco, Egypt, Israel, to the Ukraine and the USA where they performed at the Lincoln Centre in New York. They have worked in South Africa with a choir from Soweto on a partly improvised album.
Robert Hollingworth says the name I Fagiolini has been misspelt and mispronounced throughout the world.
He said: “The group is renowned for its innovative staged productions of Renaissance and Baroque music theatre works, recognition for which came in 2005 with the prestigious award of Ensemble Prize from the Royal Philharmonic Society.
“It has staged Handel with masks, Purcell with puppets, madrigal comedies with more masks and in 2004, premiered The Full Monteverdi, a dramatised account of the composer’s Fourth Book of Madrigals (1603) by John La Bouchardière, which has since been turned into a highly successful film, shown all over the world.”
I Fagiolini has recorded 16 CDs and two DVDs.
This year’s festival opens on September 24 and runs until October 1. The first concert features the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, who appeared in the very first festival and have returned many times since, and baritone Roderick Williams.
Strings feature strongly in the week’s programme, with artists including Welsh triple harp virtuoso Robin Huw Bowen, classical guitarist Dimitris Dekavallas, the ensemble Blazin’ Fiddles and the Vida Guitar Quartet.
One of the main attractions this year will be the world premiere of a new work by the royal composer, Dr Paul Mealor, who shot to global fame thanks to the sensational Royal wedding anthem he wrote for Prince William and Kate Middleton.
Dr Mealor will the subject of an evening called Portrait of a Composer featuring Ensemble Cymru and the Aberdeen University Chamber Choir. Dr Mealor will also conduct a choral workshop for mixed choirs.
The audience can also look forward to 4 Girls 4 Harps who formed in London in 2000 to perform, record, create and commission new music.
They are now the world’s leading harp quartet and have been heard in hundreds of venues and festivals in the UK and across Europe.
Among other highlights is a recital by the virtuoso pianist, Llyr Wiliams, from Rhos, near Wrexham.
For more information about this year’s event which is being held between September 24 and October 1.and how to book tickets visit www.nwimf.com
