The King's Singers: Wonderland
Signum Records

Few are the ensembles that last past a half-century, The King's Singers one that can lay claim to that distinction. To be clear, the a cappella group's current members aren't the ones who founded it in 1968 when recent choral scholars from King's College, Cambridge delivered a concert at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall. The configuration that first appeared—two countertenors, a tenor, two baritones, and a bass—has remained in place ever since, however, with Patrick Dunachie and Edward Button (countertenors), Julian Gregory (tenor), Christopher Bruerton and Nick Ashby (baritones), and Jonathan Howard (bass) the current members.

That evolving lineup (twenty-eight individual members, in total) has helped sustain the group and maintain its reputation as one of the finest vocal groups in the world. The singers' consummate artistry is obvious the moment they open their mouths, whether on a concert stage or the albums in their extensive discography. The group's repertoire is eclectic and ever-expanding, as illustrated by its early 2023 albums, the Disney-themed When you wish upon a star and Tom + Will - Weelkes & Byrd: 400 Years, a set featuring the singers and Fretwork performing material by William Byrd and Thomas Weelkes. Presenting eight of the more than 200 works the ensemble has commissioned during its fifty-five-year reign, Wonderland is the group's final release of the year and an exceptionally rewarding testament to its artistry and vision.

Indicative of the album's focus on contemporary works, the six parts of György Ligeti's Nonsense Madrigals (written for The King's Singers between 1988 and 1993) alternate with pieces by Makiko Kinoshita, Ola Gjeilo, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, Joe Hisaishi, Judith Bingham, Malcolm Williamson, and Paul Patterson and thereby create a structural armature for the recording. As the titles of the album and the penultimate part from Nonsense Madrigals, “The Lobster Quadrille," indicate, there is a direct connection to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but the recording extends into other fantastical realms too. In fact, the idea for the album originated out of the group's interest in children's stories and folk tales, as clearly shown in the inclusion of Williamson's The Musicians of Bremen, resulting in a set that sparkles with music inspired by myths, legends, and folk tales.

Ligeti's piece is worth the price of admission alone, given how technically challenging and imaginative its playful parts are; it also repeatedly showcases the group's vocal gifts to dazzling effect. Representative of the boundary-pushing work is its opening part, “Two Dreams and Little Bat,” which involves three texts sung together, one by the countertenors, another by the tenor, and the third by the remaining three voices. With a chirping “cuckoo” repeatedly accenting its intertwining vocal parts, “Cuckoo in the Pear-Tree” is one of the work's more light-hearted parts. As arresting, “The Alphabet” deploys signature Ligeti tone clusters and harmonic shifts in its setting of—wait for it—all the letters from A to Z. Intimated by its opening line, “Off with her head,” the sixth madrigal, “A Long, Sad Tale” uses texts by Carroll to bring the heady work to a suitably playful close.

With melodies that spiral gracefully in a manner suggestive of the earth's slow turning, Ashita no uta (Song for Tomorrow) by the Japanese choral composer Makiko Kinoshita draws the listener into the album's dream-like world whilst offering the first ravishing example of the group's stunning harmonies. As haunting is A Dream within a Dream by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo, a majestic work elevated by gently lilting rhythms and a prototypically finessed performance by the singers. A young British composer of Ghanaian-Nigerian heritage, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers opts for uplift in her chills-inducing Alive (“Don't fear / Breathe in the air and say a prayer and don't despair / ‘Cause you're alive”). An album highlight is the inclusion of a work by renowned Japanese film composer Joe Hisaishi, I was there also noteworthy for being his first ever piece of unaccompanied choral music. With Japanese and English phrases interspersed, the dignified setting explores the experience of bearing witness to tragic events such as 9/11, the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, and the 2020 COVID pandemic without lapsing into despair. Inhabiting a different universe altogether, vestiges of doo-wop and finger-snapping swing find their way into Bingham's Tricksters. Mirroring the cosmological aspect of Kinoshita's setting, Wonderland ends with Patterson's Time Piece, an irreverent reimagining of the creation story that proposes it was time, not snakes and apples, that brought about mankind's downfall in the Garden of Eden.

While all of the pieces are strong, one that registers as a particular showstopper is The Musicians of Bremen, written by Australian composer Malcolm Williamson and premiered by The King's Singers in 1972. A delightful musical treatment of the classic German folk tale the Brothers Grimm published in 1819, the piece recounts the saga of a donkey, dog, cat, and cockerel who bid their masters adieu in the hopes of joining an orchestra in the north German city of Bremen but encounter robbers at a forest cottage along the way. The singers' performance mesmerizes as passages alternate between ensemble sections and those where individual members assume the personae of the farm animals with “bow wows,” “eeaw eeaws,” “miaouws,” and “cock a doodle dos.” Listen to any piece on Wonderland and chances are you'll come away awed. This terrific collection is perhaps as strong an argument as could possibly be made on behalf of this current group iteration.

November 2023