Venetian Vespers
Paul McCreesh - Gabrieli Consort, Choir & Players
BoxSet : 5 CDsMore info about Paul McCreesh :
HereMore info about Gabrieli Consort & Players :
HereReviews :Gramophone Music Magazine : April 1993on "Venetian Vespers"
Gramophone Music Magazine : November 1993on "Venetian Vespers"
Gramophone Music Magazine : January 1997On "Music for San Rocco"
BBCmusic magazine : Kate Boltonon "Venetian Easter Mass"
With A Venetian Coronation, Venetian Vespers and Music for San Rocco already to their credit, the Gabrieli Consort and Players could be thought to have exhausted the Venetian theme. Yet such is the quality of the research, production and performance that each recording sounds completely fresh. Here, they recreate a procession and high Mass for Easter morning as it might have been celebrated in St Mark’s around 1600. The setting of the Mass Ordinary is Lassus’s Missa Congratulamini mihi, based on his own Easter motet; and this is interspersed with vocal and instrumental works by Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli and their contemporaries. The Mass is performed with characteristic virility and conviction – the high male voices sounding less strained than on Music for San Rocco – and McCreesh captures all the theatricality of a Venetian Easter.
After his early years in Italy, Lassus settled at the Court of Munich, and it is repertoire from his years there that the Choir of New College, Oxford, has recorded for Collins. The main work is Lassus’s Mass Tous les regretz, a glorious piece of musical architecture based on Gombert’s darkly coloured motet of the same name. While Lassus’s Munich choir was famous for its basses, New College deserves equal credit for its trebles, although at times the texture lacks sufficient support from the lower voices. Higginbottom’s long-breathed phrases and lugubrious tempi reflect the underlying melancholia of much of this music, with the bright treble sound paradoxically lending the despondency a sharper edge.
All Music Guide : James Manheim"Brilliant BoxSet"
The big box sets from the Dutch label Brilliant sometimes sacrifice coherence for volume, but this one, originally released on the Archiv imprint, offers discrete performances that you couldn't get in a smaller release, and it's well worth the budget price. The contents are more specific than the title would indicate; you actually do get a reconstruction of a Vespers service from a presumably well-off Venetian church of the early seventeenth century, one well-off enough to mount performances with a full choir and an ensemble with viols, cornett, tenor and bass sackbutts, and a continuo group. Then there is an Easter mass, assembled according to the same principles, and finally, on disc five, a reconstruction of a concert given at the Venetian church of San Rocco in 1608, featuring exclusively music by Giovanni Gabrieli. This was ostensibly a secular concert, but one of the many insights the listener can take away from this project is that the rise of the Baroque language blurred the sacred/secular boundary; there are keyboard pieces based on sacred models as well as organ polyphony, suitable for church but derived from secular songs. The two liturgies, the compilers concede, are entirely speculative, and they include music from a period spanning almost 75 years. That's a bit much, considering that according to the booklet itself music that was 50 years old was considered obsolete at this time. Would music by Cavalli have appeared with that of Giovanni Gabrieli in the same service? Perhaps not, but the set will still serve to introduce listeners to the huge variety of competing styles that flourished in the water-laced city. The entire presentation gives the listener a feel for how the motets and early sacred concertos were actually used in services, interspersed with chant antiphons, psalm settings, and instrumental music. The performances by the Gabrieli Consort Choir and Players under Paul McCreesh are clear and unfussy, which is ideal for a project of this nature. An excellent choice for classes and general collections.
Tracks:CD01:Venetian Vespers: (Beginning)
Giovanni Antonio Rigatti (1615-1649)
Alessandro Grandi (?1586-1630)
Claudio Monteverdi (1568-1643)
Giacomo Finetti (fl 1605-1631)
Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676)
CD02:Venetian Vespers (Conclusion)
Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
Giovanni Antonio Rigatti (1615-1649)
Biagio Marini (c.1587-1663)
CD03:Venetian Vespers : Venetian Easter Mass (Beginning)
Claudio Merulo (1533-1604)
Andrea Gabrieli (1533-1585)
Cesare Bendinelli (fl.1567-1617)
Giovanni Gabrieli (c.1553/56-1612)
Orlande De Lassus (1532-1594)
CD04:Venetian Vespers: Venetian Easter Mass (Conclusion)
Orlande De Lassus (1532-1594)
Giovanni Gabrielli (c.1553/56-1612)
Claudio Merulo (1533-1604)
CD05:Venetian Vespers: Giovanni Gabrieli: Music for San Rocco (1608)
Giovanni Gabrieli (c.1553/56-1612)
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