SKIPTON Music’s 2024-25 season continued with another deeply impressive concert, offering the rich contrasts between the vocal consort “Gesualdo six” and the trumpeter Matilda Lloyd in a programme largely specially arranged or composed for this combination.

The Gesualdo Six already have a well-earned reputation for their rich tone and sensitive interpretation of the music of the renaissance; and equally Matilda has been building an international career as one of today’s foremost virtuosos of the trumpet. But how would such – apparently very different – musical idioms blend together?

The answer was, in a variety of different but all totally convincing ways: sometimes the trumpet would soar above the consort, almost like an additional wordless singer; sometimes the trumpet was starkly opposed to the voices, with exuberant fanfares contrasting with their smoother harmonies.

With so many delights on offer it is hard to single out any individual items, but I was especially impressed by “grandmother moon”, by the Canadian composer Eleanor Daley; and by the contrasting pieces which opened the two halves of the concert, the sumptuous sonorities of Tallis’ “O nata lux” and the haunting cluster-chord harmonies of Roxanna Panufnik’s “O hearken”.

The performance of James MacMillan’s “in splendoribus”, with the imaginative use of the spaces of Skipton’s Town Hall to enhance the quiet ending, brought the concert to a rapt end.

Skipton Music’s next concert will be on Tuesday November, 26 at Skipton Town Hall with the Solem Quartet joining forces with Shiry Rashkovsky in an evening featuring Mendelssohn’s youthful string quintet no 1.

Details at https://skiptonmusic.org.uk; or at https://skiptontownhall.co.uk/