Elegance | Adelaide Fringe 2022 review

Lumina Vocal Ensemble and Lyrebird Consort livened up after interval with a colourful infusion of dance-inspired numbers.

Elegance - Lyrebird Consort

Elegance

Music

Rating: ***1/2

St John’s Halifax Street.

Until March 6

After a slow start, this concert warmed up and throughout the second half things buzzed along.

Music of the Renaissance and early Baroque can be a bit of an acquired taste and the ever-present woeful hearts and flowing tears abound when it really plumbs the depths.

So, the few more upbeat numbers in the first half, like the deliciously titled In Peascod Time and Go To Bed, Sweet Muse were very welcome indeed.

That said, Fringe regulars Lumina Vocal Ensemble and Lyrebird Consort livened up considerably after interval.

Their Crumhorns and Cornemuses comically sounded like disgruntled ducks, and there was a colourful infusion of dance-inspired, Italian-styled numbers from Schütz, Perucona and company.

To end with, a strongly etched performance of Charpentier’s Salve Puerule, very bewigged and perfumed in the French manner, left the sizeable audience in good humour.

Early music can grow on you if you give it a chance.