Cinquecento

Comprising five professional singers from Austria, Belgium, England, Germany and Switzerland, Cinquecento takes its name from the Italian term for the 16th century. Formed in Vienna in October 2004, the group quickly established itself as one of Europe’s premiere vocal ensembles. Cinquecento aims to bring lesser-known 16th-century choral repertoire from the courts of Imperial Austria to a wider public, as well as performing a varied range of Renaissance polyphony. Recent interest from modern composers has also seen the ensemble add a variety of contemporary works to its repertoire.

Aside from numerous performances in Austria, the ensemble continues to forge a busy international touring schedule. Projects abroad have taken them to Belgium, Holland, Poland, the UK, Switzerland, France, Portugal, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia, Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as the USA, Canada and South Korea. Since September 2005, Cinquecento has been the ensemble in residence at the Church of St Rochus and St Sebastian in Vienna, where it performs a polyphonic mass setting every week.

Alongside the many accolades lavished on the group’s recordings, including the Diapason d’Or for its CD of Palestrina’s Second Book of Lamentations, Cinquecento was awarded the Deutschlandfunk Sponsorship Prize for outstanding promise in 2009 by the Bremen Music Festival. Since 2006 Cinquecento has recorded for Hyperion, focussing on Habsburg court composers from the 16th century. The ensemble’s latest CD, which was released earlier this year, features Heinrich Isaac’s six-part Missa Wohlauff gut Gsell von Hinnen.