King’s Singers: Aristocratic Airs

The King’s Singers brought their still unique blend to the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Saturday night in a captivating mixture of Renaissance, folk and 20th century music.

In selections from the 15th and 16th centuries, countertenors David Hurley and Nigel Short, tenor Bob Chilcott, baritones Philip Lawson and Gabriel Crouch and bass Stephen Connolly proved once again that scholarly attentiveness should not mean bloodless stylization.

Instead, the British group--which has maintained its otherworldly refinement, if not the membership, of its 1968 origins at Kings College, Cambridge--convinced equally in glassy-surfaced reverence for Willaert’s motet “Ave Virgo,” lighthearted characterization for Le Jeune’s madrigal “Une Puce” (The Flea) and colorful narrative for Jannequin’s rousing “La guerre.”

Technical demands did not impede hilarity during four selections from Gyorgy Ligeti’s “Nonsense Madrigals,” the only works on the a cappella program that required the use of scores.

In “Two Dreams and Little Bat,” three Victorian texts came into complex and appealing conflict, each set in its own time signature with its own intricate rhythms.

“The Alphabet” brought mock seriousness to shifting, hushed clusters that moved through sustained dissonances, while intoning letter names before resolving at the letter “zed.”

Pleasant if unmemorable arrangements of folk and popular songs provided opportunities to demonstrate soloistic strengths and to poke fun at their own sophistication with special-effect vocalisms mimicking instrumental accompaniment.

But if the arrangements offered here did not impress, the clarity, control and communicativeness of the King’s Singers’ performance remained unparalleled.