Orfeo ed Euridice, Usher Hall, Edinburgh International Festival
“Much of the most intense music-making came not from the singers but from the players of the English Concert. Labadie gave the dance of the Frenzies a startling rhythmic energy, and teased out the colours of Gluck’s wonderful score, such as the doleful sound of the two horns, as plangent as a funeral bell. In the wonderful scene in the Elysian fields, the players relished Gluck’s amazing inventiveness, the warblings of flute and solo cellist evoking the scene of pastoral bliss. The chorus of the English Concert made a keenly focused, expressive sound in their laments for Euridice’s death, and jubilation at the happy ending.”
— Ivan Hewitt, The Telegraph
