To coincide with the St Valentine’s weekend Vache Baroque came to Fidelio Cafe with a Baroque tasting board of languishing and lovelorn song and dance. Their cohort of five instrumentalists, playing in different combinations with mezzo Bethany Horak-Hallett, offered a colourful and varied programme ranging from the Italian Renaissance to a Beatles encore, very well suited to the ambience and acoustics of Fidelio Cafe.
The first sequence included items that might have been performed together at a wedding in the 16th century. After a couple of instrumental items by Salmone Rossi, whose swirling lines were sufficient to set feet tapping, we literally reached the heart of the matter in Monteverdi’s exquisite ‘So sweet in the torment’, full of anguished suspensions. A contrasting martial madrigal by Giovanni Gastoldi gave us a portrait of victorious love, cheeky and chirruping, the kind of music that would in real life have matched the confronting ‘Victorious Cupid’ by Caravaggio currently showcased at the Wallace Collection, not so far away.
Things then took an altogether darker and more inward direction with a chromatic ‘Lacrimae’ by Johann Schop and Dowland’s familiar ‘Can she excuse my wrongs?’ Horak-Hallett delivered these with precise diction, relishing the interplay with particular solo instruments and raising the scale of her delivery as the textures of the accompaniments opened out for the full ensemble.
We then moved onto a Purcell sequence, a composer who covers the gamut in this repertory from bold bawdry to anguished interiority. What resonated here was how Purcell inserted the intimate and familiar even into several of his public works for the royal family. Once example revolved around a delightful story in which after Queen Mary complained about the over-elaboration of Purcell’s odes, he in return wove into the next iteration a favourite Scottish folksong, ‘The Blythsome Bridal’, the chorus of which we all got to sing.
The official programme ended with a group of mainly instrumental items by Telemann, Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and Rameau, which the ensemble negotiated with sinuous flair despite a brief break for a broken E-string. This is an ensemble who are clearly very used to playing alongside each other with all the natural give and take that involves. All augurs well for their summer season.
Interspersed between the musical items were suitable pieces of poetry by Shakespeare, Herrick and two aristocratic lady poets. These were all interesting contributions, but I was surprised to hear no Donne or Herbert, or other metaphysical poets so well attuned both to love and musical imagery and reference. Also, it has to be said that musicians are not automatically or inevitably the best readers of poetry, and here it would have helped to have had a professional reader at the lectern as they did in their previous excellent programme featuring Wilde’s ‘De Profundis.’
Fidelio Cafe
Vache Baroque, directed by
Jonathan Darbourne
Singer: Bethany Horak-Hallett
13/14 February 2026
1 hr 15 mins