MUSIC REVIEW : Chamber Series Offers London Group in L.A. Debut

The Scholars of London made a pleasant study in its local debut, Thursday at St. Vincent de Paul Church for Chamber Music in Historic Sites. Soprano Kym Amps, countertenor Angus Davidson, tenor Robin Doveton and bass David van Asch offered light, flexible sound, utterly transparent textures and completely integrated finesse on behalf of “Spanish and English Music From the Time of the Armada.”

That agenda was also a nicely crafted, substantial joy, with a leavening of familiar favorites among less well-known pieces. The English half mirrored the Spanish in text topics, even having William Byrd complete the Mass cycle begun by Pedro Ruimonte.

Although the material ranged over four generations and several traditions, the Scholars of London treated it all in the same style. It came to seem that really only two composers were represented: one wrote slow, generally sacred music, filled with long, expressively swelling lines; the other composed quick, mostly secular pieces of clipped, exaggerated articulation. Only idiosyncratic masterpieces such as the Byrd Mass movements emerged distinctly.

Within this all-purpose style, the vocalists were quite sensitive to text interpretations, as in their shift to a brighter sound and gently pulsed rhythmicality in the homophonic parts of Melchor Robledo’s “Hoc Corpus” and the sudden clarion fervor of “et resurrexit” in the Ruimonte Credo. In contrast, madrigals by Byrd, Thomas Morley and John Wilbye sounded understated, though musically buoyant.