Fretwork

At the Wigmore Hall, Fretwork’s concert of Orlando Gibbons’s In Nomines and Fantasias proved that the divine is almost invariably better expressed in a few short minutes of polyphony…the measured progress of the cantus firmus in Gibbons’s four- and five-part In Nomines was, as played by Susanna Pell, a miracle of modesty and devotion. Fretwork could have chosen to underscore the multiple references to Monteverdi, the flashes of chiaroscuro in the intricate counterpoint and the almost Corelli-esque gestures of the three-part Fantasies. Instead they applied an even, unruffled curve of sound to every phrase, alowing the music to inhale and exhale in perfect, unhurried loveliness.