MUCH of western music over the past two millennia has been centred round Christian traditions. But other streams and eddies have also irrigated it, as Ensemble Lucidarium reminded us in the festival’s entertaining opening event on Friday.

Music for a Merchant, subtitled Sounds from Shylock’s Venice, simultaneously commemorated the quincentenary of the Venice ghetto (1516), the first to be founded anywhere, and the quatercentenary of Shakespeare’s death (1616). On the group’s first return to York since 2010, Enrico Fink was once again the leading light, acting and singing his way through the narratives, sometimes playful, always sardonic.

He was also the bass in a vocal quartet exploring music common in 16th century Italy, much of it with Jewish connexions and here sung in Italian, Spanish, Hebrew or Yiddish. The five instrumentalists considerably enlivened what might otherwise have been workaday strophic songs.

The variety of styles was intoxicating. The top three voices gave jaunty advice to a Jewish bride but later, in madrigal fashion, mocked a nymph of doubtful beauty called Ebraica. There was an excursion into the Venetian liturgy, immediately balanced by a light-hearted tale of a Jew becoming a Christian convert.

The players, notably Élodie Poirier, doubling on cello and nyckelharpa (a keyed fiddle of Swedish origin), and Avery Gosfield’s simultaneous handling of pipe and tabor, provided deft interludes. All were evocative. But Fink’s high, cantor-style delivery of Psalm 137, took the prize for authenticity.