On 2 September 2025, twenty first-year students of the Master’s programme in Applied Musicology at Utrecht University attended the concert by Sollazzo Ensemble.. Below, you can read five of the reviews they wrote as part of one of their assignments.

Reviews students Applied Musicology

Sollazzo Ensemble’s La Flamboyance: ceremonial festive music from 1425
Seen: Festival Oude Muziek, TivoliVredenburg, Grote Zaal, 2 September, 20:00

Anyone entering Sollazzo Ensemble’s La Flamboyance expecting a medieval masquerade of swirling gowns, overflowing banquets, and jubilant dance music soon had to readjust their expectations. Under the subtle direction of vihuela d’arco player Anna Danilevskaia, the flamboyance reveals itself not in spectacle, but in restraint and delicate detail.

The stage offers a sober tableau: some twenty musicians arranged symmetrically in a half-moon, eight singers and the rest on period instruments. Their attire is almost uniformly black, with some twinkles lit only by sharp white stage lights – except for Danilevskaia, whose glittering shirt, half sparkle and half chain mail, entrancingly sets her apart.

If the costumes and poses are restrained, the interplay of music and lighting bring out Sollazzo’s colours. The sounds of Dufay, Binchois, and lesser-known contemporaries are cast anew by a thoughtful lighting design: motets about rain wash the stage in ocean blue; chansons of panthers flanked by Mars and Jupiter burst into fiery red and yellow, flames licking at the musicians’ outlines; and woodland love songs glow in green and rose, smoke curling gently behind.

Yet this colourful brilliance is not constant. Too often the stage returns to an icy monochrome, and the music risks blurring into sameness. Though presented in dignified succession, compositions sporadically merge into a droning continuum, with surtitles flashing by too quickly to sharpen the experience. The performers’ stillness deepens the effect: each work mostly fixed in one pose, one image, one hue – like turning the stiff pages of a photobook. The result is not necessarily lifelessness, but a series of tableaux vivants: moments to contemplate rather than consume.

The concert’s true flamboyance lays hidden in its intimacy. Not the tutti passages, but Jonatan Alvarado’s radiant, hushed solo of Binchois’ ‘Amours merchi’, framed only by lutes and a second voice, or the exquisite intermingling duet of mezzos Ariane Le Fournis and Ivana Ivanovic in De Belengué’s ‘Pour une fois’, crack the evening open with cleverness on a smaller scale. Detailed modern sparks – the organetto’s dissonant opening chords or the shimmer of bronze bells – make the old sound unusually new.

Sollazzo’s La Flamboyance is no carnival, but a meditation. Reserved rather than clamorous, it asks to find sparkles in their miniatures. Those listening closely may discover a flamboyance no less impressive for being small.

Cédric Rath

 

 

Ghostly Revival - “La Flamboyance”

A sense of nervous excitement filled my heart as I sat down in the TivoliVredenburg Tuesday night for a performance of 15th century music by the Salazzo Ensemble at the Early Music Festival Utrecht. What could I expect? What kind of instruments would I even see? Lacking a deep background in medieval or renaissance music, I pondered the distance between myself and those near-ancient artists. As a slight haze hung in the air before the performance in Tivoli’s stunning, vaulted Grote Zaal, I wondered if this gap would be too great.

Surprisingly, I recognized the forms and genres almost immediately. Lutes, flutes, organs, and medieval trombones conjured up images of court jesters, Sir Lancelot, or perhaps Robin Hood’s merry men. Above these soft instrumentals, adulate voices sang hymnal words reminiscent of my childhood church psalms, the voices evoking a purity and innocence of angels from on high. It seems that even a slight education from hours spent watching cartoons, Star Trek episodes, or playing The Witcher was enough grounding to follow these various moods - creeping, lithe majesty in “Una Panthera’s” ascending melody or hypnotic, holy reverence in “O Sancte Sebastiane’s” softly rolling soprano melodies.

Still, it was hard to ignore how distant these songs are from our modern times. The themes presented - tales of saints, Parisian windmills, or inscrutable latin ritual phrases - seemed wildly out of time and place. To even follow the lyrics being sung, one must constantly refer to an English/Dutch translation scrolling by on a small screen - that is, unless you have been keeping up with your medieval French.

It was a truly mind bending experience to see time folded down to the size of the hall - I was in awe of both the incredible sense of connection and humanity in the music, and these alien melodies expressing otherworldly concerns. For a little over an hour, I could wrestle with these questions, this dance of recognition between me and the music creating its own adventure, where everyone involved is negotiating their place within the ghostly presence of those long past.

Riley Kelly

 

Review

“Globus gneus apparuit supercar” is the opening sentence with which the The Sollazzo Ensemble opened their concert La Flamboyance in the Grote Zaal at Tivoli Vredenburg. The performance was part of the Monday evening programming for the Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht. The ensemble is known as a group performing music from the Middle Ages, yesterday’s performance encompassing a multitude of years surrounding 1425. Sollazzo successfully translates the scarce information provided by the rendered sheet music into festive and decorated music. The group’s rendition leaves one imagining themselves wandering through medieval courts on a sunny afternoon. To me, the highlight of the evening was Richard de Bellengué’s “Pour une fois et pour toute ma vie,” and Jonatan Alvarado’s heartfelt rendition of the piece. The vulnerability of the lyrics was successfully translated by the singer, moving the audience as everyone in the hall was obediently listening to the sole male voice moving through the room. The performance was accompanied by some lighting effects, as there was a constant alternation between a dark room with spotlights on the musicians, and the room filled with a certain colour, often relating to the music’s lyrics. For example when the whole room was lighted by a Mars-red hue at the mention of the planet, or as the the Globus gneus (fireball) from the opening lyrics, was projected repeatedly on the back of the stage. The lighting choices were a clear testament to the modernization of the music in performance, as there would have never been any kind of intense lightning involved in medieval performances. Afterwards there was the opportunity to go to a Q&A with Anna Danilevskaia, which I did. She was very well enlightened and passionate about the project and the ensemble’s process to perform such music. One of the things that struck me most during this Q&A was when she explained that paintings were one of the sources used to interpret the music, the used instruments and the setting. As paintings are always defined by the observations made by the painter, it left me wondering if this performance, the way it was sung, interpreted and staged, was adding to the ever so evolving development of a simulacra of medieval music.

Kiki Munnichs

 

 

Review

Every edition of the Festival of Early Music is a treasure trove, and this year is no exception. Last Tuesday, I had the pleasure to go to a concert of the Sollazzo Ensemble in Tivoli Vredenburg in Utrecht.

One of the things that immediately struck me during the concert was that the program was put together in a very organic way. If the breaks between pieces were slightly shorter, it could have felt as one long composition in a late Medieval/early Renaissance style. One example for this organic feeling that remains vividly in my memory was the bell at the end of the first piece (Pullois’ Globus igneus). The sound of the bell resonated long enough that the opening chord of the second piece (Pullois’ Flos de spina) perfectly matched the tone produced by the bell.

Every part of the ensemble was given the chance to stand out during specific works. This is very important, because the listener gets the opportunity to hear the musical abilities of each performer. In that sense, examples which stood out for me were the tenor’s solo in Binchois’ Amours mercy and the flautist in Borlet’s Ma trez dol Rossignol.

Those were examples of the ensemble’s performing abilities. When focusing on the music itself, one piece stood out for me in a surprising way. Besides the chord progressions that seem so common for late Medieval music, of interesting note was the dissonant introduction to Ciconia’s “Una panthera.” Now, keep in mind that dissonance is not necessarily unique in early music, but it does show the musicians’ abilities to add their own unique flavour to the music.

All in all, I must say this concert was not just an immersive listening experience for early music connoisseurs, but it also serves as a suitable introduction to what early music encompasses. It will be interesting to see where the artistic journey of the Sollazzo Ensemble will go to and what they will have in store for us in the future.

Arend Jan Vermaat

 

Review

Never before have I seen so much sparkle onstage at an early music concert, and never before has the sparkle been so appropriate. The iridescent clothing worn by the musicians of Sollazzo Ensemble reflected the ever exciting and ever new music from the early 1400s they performed on Tuesday night.

The concert opened with the striking of a bell and a sonic explosion into a joyful fanfare. The instruments and voices interwove, each spinning its own ornate line that together made something delightfully complicated. The bell was struck again at the close of the opening piece, but now the same sound had a different meaning as it was used to usher the ensemble from joy to somber reflection. From these first two pieces, the variety of sonic possibilities and emotional depth on offer by the ensemble was clear.

               The entire ensemble consisted of twelve instrumentalists and nine vocalists, but over the course of the evening, a variety of small assemblages of musicians were showcased. By contrasting different combinations of instruments and voices, Sollazzo Ensemble demonstrated the flexibility of early Renaissance music. Diverse timbres and styles made for a constantly engaging listening experience.

               The dramatic opening of the concert showcased the power of the full ensemble with all the human and instrumental voices engaged. This full and dazzling display of musical power was well contrasted with another piece that came halfway through the program, which featured only seven musicians, one of whom was a soloist. The startling intimacy of this meditation on the devotion of love made the Grote Zaal feel small.

               Over the course of an hour, Sollazzo Ensemble dazzled with the sonic and emotional diversity of early 15th century music. Each piece of the program provided something new to delight the ears. I was left overawed by the endless possibilities of arrangements for this repertory and how after six hundred years it could still feel new.

Natalie Eberhardt