Folger Consort's Spanish Renaissance Christmas

Adio España: Romances, Villancicos, and Improvisations from Spain, Circa 1500, Baltimore Consort

Charles T. Downey, Christmas in Renaissance Spain: The Folger Consort Presents “O Magnum Mysterium” (The Washingtonian, December 13):

Out of the burgeoning field of holiday concerts in Washington, the one offered by the Folger Consort seemed likely to be the best -- and not merely the least annoying. Having heard the group’s program of music from the Spanish Renaissance on Saturday night in the Folger Shakespeare Library’s garland-and-light-adorned Elizabethan theater, it’s official. If you’re tired of the same few carols assaulting your ears everywhere—on the radio, in store lobbies, from speakers while you put gas in your car—take an evening to go back four or five hundred years in time and listen to some old and less familiar music for Christmas. Most of it, except for a few pieces that are more widely known -- including the inevitable villancico Ríu Ríu Chíu, performed here in the best possible way -- you won’t have heard before.

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This concert was reviewed only at Washingtonian.com.