The quintet Apollo5 offers thematic releases that delve into specific emotions. Here, the subject is the melancholia and the occasional joys of love, taken in its broadest sense. What makes this work well is the uncanny ability of the five singers to modulate their expressive mood according to the material they are singing. For the two motets of Francisco Guerrero included here, or in the intriguing neo-organum of soprano group member Emily Dickens, they are almost as silkily blended as a cathedral boychoir, but much of the ...
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The quintet Apollo5 offers thematic releases that delve into specific emotions. Here, the subject is the melancholia and the occasional joys of love, taken in its broadest sense. What makes this work well is the uncanny ability of the five singers to modulate their expressive mood according to the material they are singing. For the two motets of Francisco Guerrero included here, or in the intriguing neo-organum of soprano group member Emily Dickens, they are almost as silkily blended as a cathedral boychoir, but much of the program consists of music of the 20th century, and in these, Apollo5 opens up and lets the voices of the individual members show through. Consider Eric Whitacre's This Marriage (2004), where the lush settings of Rumi's text take on a good deal of intensity, or Gerald Finzi's "Haste on, my joys!," where the singers achieve the right madrigalesque quality. The program is well set up to display this vocal variety, although, when the group has sung it live, popular songs have been...
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