By Garry Fraser

THE VENUES for performances in this year’s Edinburgh Festival have been wide and varied, but one has held its own mini-festival, the beautiful Greyfriars Kirk.

This has been the scene of a collection of performances of the greatest renaissance music, sung by brilliant exponents of the art of vocal polyphony.

On Friday night brought the chance to witness one, an evening of compositions by the three “Ts,” Tallis, Taverner and Tye.

Works by these masters need high quality in four departments—balance, tuning, precision and acoustic.

The Theatre of Voices and Ars Nova Copenhagen ticked the first three boxes in superb fashion, with the Kirk providing the fourth.

All 16 singers, under the direction of Paul Hillier, sang with a clarity that was quite serene at times and spell-binding throughout.

The three mediaeval songs interspersed throughout this glorious polyphony were also beautifully delivered, either as a trio or duet.

Of the ensemble pieces, Tallis’ Salvator Mundi was superb, but excelled by In Pace by Tye.

The standard was maintained by cranking up time a notch or two to the world of baroque, and taking a trip to the Usher Hall.

This time the quality was provided by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, directed by Chiara Banchini, and the incredible talent of Andreas Scholl.

All the hype around this man is well justified. He truly is a singing phenomenon, a counter-tenor of unrivalled quality.

His performance of Vivaldi’s cantata Cessate, Omni Cessate was sensational, and its translation “cease now cease” was the last thing a capacity audience would have wanted.

However, he surpassed himself in Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater with which he and Ms Banchini have a long-standing association.

Best by far was the penultimate movement, Eia Mater, with the staccato rasp of the strings countering Scholl’s silky phrasing.

One should never call the SCO backing instrumentalists, but in both these works they were the essence of perfection.

In the concerti grossi by Corelli, Geminiani, Vivaldi and Scarlatti, which completed the programme, they were in excellent form, cementing my opinion that in baroque or classical music, they are the best of the bunch by far.