The vocal ensemble I Fagiolini is one of Oxford’s most successful musical exports, combining exquisite music making with theatre and movement to create experiences which range from the powerfully moving to the hilariously funny.

Once you’ve seen them you’ll never think of Renaissance music in the same way. Whether you are already a fan, or a newcomer to the group, I Fagiolini’s Christmas Party at Kings Place in London from December 16 to 19 offers a perfect opportunity to experience their creative and engaging approach. The group hasn’t performed in Oxford since 2006. Instead concert engagements take them to Europe and even further afield. So this series of four London concerts, two of which I Fagiolini perform in, is a good chance to see them.

The opening night, Christmas Around Europe, promises to be a typical I Fagiolini extravaganza featuring Byrd motets, a monody by Hildegard of Bingen, Poulenc’s wartime cantata Un soir de neige, some Swiss clocktower figures, and an ‘alternative’ version of the Twelve Days of Christmas. The central work is an ensalada (literally ‘salad’) called La Justa (The Joust) by the Spanish Renaissance composer Mateo da Flecha. In it, Christ and Adam fight for the future of mankind but when Adam is beaten, Christ appears and Lucifer runs away pursued by a lynch mob. All jolly festive stuff.

I Fagiolini performed another of Flecha’s salads, The Fire, at Dorchester Abbey some years ago. I was one of two members of the audience plucked from our seats and incorporated into a kind of tableau vivant as part of the performance. This is the kind of unpredictable thing that can happen when you go to see I Fagiolini. Anyone who attended a live performance of their show The Full Monteverdi will have had the experience of seeing the bickering couple sitting nearby suddenly turn out to be two of the performers: their testy exchanges modulating into the anguished polyphony of Monteverdi’s Fourth Book of Madrigals.

I asked founder director Robert Hollingworth (right) if they planned any audience participation for the London concert. He thought perhaps not this time, but with or without audience involvement you can expect humour, spectacle, and moments of great beauty. The second concert features James Gilchrist and Anna Tilbrook, who appeared in this year’s Oxford Lieder festival. Gilchrist is a former member of I Fagiolini and now one of the country’s top tenors. He and Tilbrook will perform Schubert’s Winterreise – having performed Schwanengesgang in Oxford in October.

The music of the exquisite Winterreise cycle, which is now so well known, shocked Schubert’s friends with its unrelenting gloominess when he first performed it for them. Written towards the end of the composer’s short life the cycle is particularly bleak but breathtakingly beautiful. This concert, though, is the only one of the four to strike a sombre note. Boisterous good humour returns with the third concert and the Scandinavian group Barokksoloistene – five string players and continuo last seen at the BBC Proms. They will be joined by three mystery baritones in the recreation of a night out in a 17th-century ale house. Some bawdy Purcell catches feature in the programme along with other appropriate fare. Robert told me he first encountered Barokksoloistene at an early music festival in Copenhagen in 2006 and was “blown away”. “They bring a fantastic combination of technical ability, real flare for the improvisatory feel so crucial to this music but rigorous use of style,” he said. “They are not well known in the UK but are amazing performers so I hope people come to see them.”

The final concert features I Fagiolini and Barokksoloistene in a performance of Bach’s Lutheran Mass in G minor plus two seasonal cantatas. Bach’s music would originally have been performed with one voice or instrument to a part, and that’s how I Fagiolini and Barokksolistene will present these works.

“We so rarely have the chance to hear one to a part performance in a venue which really suits it,” said Robert. “Kings Place, with its wonderful intimate acoustic, is the ideal venue.” I Fagiolini was founded in 1986, when all the singers were students at Oxford University. In 1988, they won the UK Early Music Network’s Young Artists’ Competition and have since released 15 CDs and two DVDs. As well as presenting I Fagiolini’s concerts Robert also writes and presents programmes for BBC Radio 3 and can be heard presenting the Early Music Show on December 5.

The group will probably not perform in Oxford until 2011, their 25th anniversary year. If you don’t want to wait that long you had better book seats at Kings Place. For details see: www.kingsplace. co.uk/music/weekly-themes/ christmas-around-europe. For information about I Fagiolini see: www.ifagiolini.com