The comparativist

Manchester-based wind quintet Cardinal was the latest «Midweek Music» presentation at Christ Church, drawing a crowd of more than 200 music admirers. The quintet comprises musicians from the Royal Northern College of Music who started playing together as undergraduates and by 2025 were the recipients of the RNCM Fewkes Chamber Music Prize (alongside pianist Lucian Amette Crosby, with whom they also won the Brodsky Prize that year). Joining them onstage was the abovementioned Lucian Amette Crosby, who has been collaborating with the quintet for some time now and is surely just a wind instrument away from turning the Cardinal Quintet into a sextet. Maybe try the organ? The near-sextet played music by 20th-century French neoclassical composers Jean Françaix and Francis Poulenc, and also performed a number by Kuba Williams, who graced Christ Church with his presence to hear his «A Messe of Good Fellows», a piece whose drinking-song flair left some attendees longing for a pint. Al...