The Gesualdo Six / Owain Park FADING

 

FADING

 

The Gesualdo Six / Owain Park FADING

                                                                          FADING

Cappella Amsterdam / Daniel Reuss JOSQUIN DES PREZ Miserere mei Deus

'To lament, to mourn, to memorialise: such was the new fashion at the very end of the fifteenth century', writes Alice Tacaille. 'The poet, in mourning the musician, attains an expressive intimacy ... a eulogy of art that places the lamenting poet himself at the origin of the immortal memory which the artist will enjoy.' Such is the case with the celebrated 'Deploration' on the death of Ockeghem, which, alongside Nymphes, nappées, forms a pair of superb musical epitaphs by the illustrious Josquin. With this programme combining secular homages and sacred polyphony, Daniel Reuss and the singers of Cappella Amsterdam launch a magisterial trilogy devoted to the Franco-Flemish masters of the Renaissance.

Daniel Taylor / The Trinity Choir THE PATH TO PARADISE

The word sublime should never be used lightly, but if ever a collection of music warrants the term it's this one. In keeping with its title, this latest recording by Daniel Taylor and the Trinity Choir, their follow-up to Four Thousand Winter and the Juno-nominated The Tree of Life, offers a direct route to paradise, its figurative access achieved when the immediate space is filled with its glorious vocal performances. The set-list is dominated by choral works from the sixteenth century, the two by Arvo Pärt obvious exceptions. His pieces, as anyone familiar with the Estonian composer's output will have already guessed, sit comfortably alongside those by Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Nicolas Gombert, and others. Though their works are set to sacred texts about the soul's lifelong struggle to achieve salvation, The Path To Paradise presents spiritually replenishing music whose rapturous beauty is capable of speaking to the faithful and non-faithful alike. (Textura.org)

Magnificat / Philip Cave SCATTERED ASHES Josquin's Miserere and the Savonarolan Legacy

To celebrate their 25^th anniversary, vocal ensemble Magnificat directed by Philip Cave have created a programme of Renaissance polyphonic works inspired by Girolamo Savonarola's (1452-98) famous meditations written while awaiting execution. One contemplates Psalm 50, Miserere mei, Deus, and another Psalm 30, In te, Domine, speravi. Savonarola was a Dominican friar burnt at the stake for his reformist preaching, his ashes scattered in a river to prevent supporters preserving them as relics.
This disc opens with Josquin's extraordinarily vast setting of the Miserere. Weighing in at just over 17 minutes, it is a motet of grandiose proportions characterised by repetition of the words ‘Miserere mei, Deus' (Have mercy on me, God). This functions like a refrain with five voices framing what is mostly a two- or three-voiced texture. Added to this, Cave employs his full complement of singers for each refrain and uses just solo voices in between, further emphasising the variations of texture. The overall tempo is quite slow if compared, say, to La Chapelle Royale under Philippe Herreweghe, but solo voices allow for a suppleness of phrasing that enhances forward momentum, often with arrestingly beautiful segues between textures such as at ‘et impii ad te convertentur' (‘and the unholy will turn back to you'), where a solo soprano soars over the dying echo of Savonarola's repeated plea.
In Lhéritier's more dense polyphonic setting of In te, Domine, speravi, Magnificat's velvety sound is at its most luxurious. This sonorous ensemble, combined with Cave's unhurried tempi, create a wonderfully melancholic sound world. Their interpretations of the post-Josquin generation of continental composers, Gombert and Clemens specifically, are among the finest on disc.
The programme ends with Byrd's Infelix ego. It's a tender performance; phrases roll pleasingly forwards under Cave's direction and his interpretation nudges Byrd closer to his continental counterparts. My own preference lies with a more demonstrative madrigalian approach such as The Cardinall's Musick under Andrew Carwood, leading to a dramatic final plea ‘Miserere mei, Deus' scorching the texture with emphatic chords. Here, instead, Cave strikes a prayerful note to end his programme. (Edward Breen / Gramophone)

The Hilliard Ensemble NICOLAS GOMBERT Missa Media Vita In Morte Sumus

A rightful successor to Josquin Desprez, with whom he studied, Nicolas Gombert had been long neglected at the time of this recording. The mass represented here, split as it is among a choice selection of motets, is exemplary of his gift for rewriting. His vocal lines are characterized by their restlessness, both in terms of composition (the virtual lack of rests in the score) and mood (in its constant search for resolution).

How do Hilliards bring their own sensibility to music already so fine? By doing what they always do so well: allowing their entire beings to resonate with every note they sing. Augmenting their usual quartet, the Hilliards welcome bass Robert Macdonald and tenor Andreas Hirtreiter (making a trio of tenors for three of the motets herein) for this long-overdue recording. Macdonald’s presence is especially felt in the six-part motet, Media vita in morte sumus, that opens the program. Like much of what follows on this disc, the music is dark and bottom-heavy. This doesn’t mean, however, that moments of light are nowhere to be found, for in the escalations of tense polyphony that abound there is the illumination of obscurity. Like a stained glass window, one comes to know it through its variations in opacity and translucence, and then only through a glow whose source remains as intangible as the reverence that gave it life.

Gombert takes the Media vita in morte sumus as source for his five-part Missa Media Vita. Scattered among a selection of motets, the voices of the Missa tumble into one another in a music resigned to its own finitude. Harmonies tend toward the dissonant and tight, so that moments of consonance shine with an airy quality that seems to bypass the mind completely and head straight to the prayerful heart. There is gravity in this music, both in its sense of seriousness and in terms of force. One need listen no further than the Kyrie, which through its introductory tenor line shifts the angle of light to a gallery of rolling landscapes. Between the subtler interactions of the Sanctus and the continued magic of the tenor lines in the Agnus Dei, one cannot help but hear in their amen(d)s a visceral resolution.

Throughout the remaining motets, the brilliance of David James steals the heart, especially in O crux, splenidor cunctis. His duetted lines with tenors in the Salve Regina seem also to fly, scanning pasture for supplication. Unexpected changes await in Anima Mea, which moves with the timidity of a newly baptized child, while the closing Musae lovis, a tribute to Josquin, surrounds us in folds of ever-changing breath.

Gombert’s is music one can easily get lost in. In doing so, the listener learns to shut out the individual voice in favor of the grander tabernacle it embodies. His motives work in ropes more than threads. Like members of a shepherd’s flock, herded by divine command, they may not understand the constitution of the voice that guides them, but through the sound alone they know to press on with their brothers and sisters into the setting sun. (ECM Reviews)