Music review: Dunedin Consort/Nicholas Mulroy, Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh

CALLING your concert “Music of loss and consolation” hardly makes it sound like a bundle of laughs. But in fact, there was plenty to inspire and uplift in this ravishing mix of Spanish Renaissance and contemporary works from the Dunedin Consort, in an all-choral incarnation of 13 voices directed by Nicholas Mulroy. Not least, the group’s sheer vocal elan, which ran through the whole eclectic programme like a thread, precise and focused even in complex passages, exquisitely balanced with a constant shifting emphasis on the music’s intertwining vocal lines, capable of ear-splitting power yet the subtlest of inflections too. Mulroy is a respected tenor himself, and his direction was assured and expertly judged: at times he appeared to leave the singers to their own devices, while at others he goaded them with urgent gestures to ever greater expressivity.