Music for Holy week and Easter.
"Si autem Christus praedicatur quod suscitatus est a mortuis, quomodo quidam dicunt in vobis quoniam resurrectio mortuorum non est?
Si autem resurrectio mortuorum non est, neque Christus suscitatus est!
Si autem Christus non suscitatus est, inanis est ergo praedicatio nostra, inanis est et fides vestra;"
(Cor 1,15 12-14)
This coming week is Holy week, the last week before Easter.
Here is my choice for Holy week and Easter.
Le Christ est ressuscité!!
* Especially, the 27th Sunday after Trinity occurs in this year. To celebrate it...
Bach, "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme", BWV 140
1. Byrd, Music for Holy Week and Easter, Cardinall's Musick/Andrew Carwood, ASV
This recording covers most of Byrd's Holy week and Easter music, from St John's Passion choruses for Good Friday to the Octave day of Easter, and including miniature Vespers at the end of the Easter Vigil, and the whole of the Proper of the Mass for Easter Day.
Throughout, Cardinall's Musick maintains a remarkable balance between drama and restraint.
2. Rimski-Korsakov, Russian Easter Festival Overture, Op. 36, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra/David Zinman.
Rimski-Korsakov's Russian Easter Festival Overture is a sophisticated feast of orchestral colour based on Russian Orthodox canticles and hymns. Espiecally, the opening solos cound not me more beautifully played.The solemn wood wind, the radiant strings, a cadenza for the leader, a melancholy solo cello, a ruminative flute and patriarchal trombones, before the flute again takes wing and accompanies a sinuous carinet.
3. Bach, Easter Cantata, Gardiner
Here is the work from Gardiner's lively reponses to the many instances of word-painting and his intuitive feeling for dance rhythms.
4. Handel, La resurrezione, Marc Minkowski.
Still one of Handel's most underrated, or at any rate most underperofrmed works, La Resurrezione explores the expressive power of colour in new ways with unexpected orchestration as the Dixit Dominus does.
With strong cast, Minkowski gives us a vital impression of a particularly fine sample of Handel’s youth.
Si autem resurrectio mortuorum non est, neque Christus suscitatus est!
Si autem Christus non suscitatus est, inanis est ergo praedicatio nostra, inanis est et fides vestra;"
(Cor 1,15 12-14)
This coming week is Holy week, the last week before Easter.
Here is my choice for Holy week and Easter.
Le Christ est ressuscité!!
* Especially, the 27th Sunday after Trinity occurs in this year. To celebrate it...
Bach, "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme", BWV 140
1. Byrd, Music for Holy Week and Easter, Cardinall's Musick/Andrew Carwood, ASV
This recording covers most of Byrd's Holy week and Easter music, from St John's Passion choruses for Good Friday to the Octave day of Easter, and including miniature Vespers at the end of the Easter Vigil, and the whole of the Proper of the Mass for Easter Day.
Throughout, Cardinall's Musick maintains a remarkable balance between drama and restraint.
2. Rimski-Korsakov, Russian Easter Festival Overture, Op. 36, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra/David Zinman.
Rimski-Korsakov's Russian Easter Festival Overture is a sophisticated feast of orchestral colour based on Russian Orthodox canticles and hymns. Espiecally, the opening solos cound not me more beautifully played.The solemn wood wind, the radiant strings, a cadenza for the leader, a melancholy solo cello, a ruminative flute and patriarchal trombones, before the flute again takes wing and accompanies a sinuous carinet.
3. Bach, Easter Cantata, Gardiner
Here is the work from Gardiner's lively reponses to the many instances of word-painting and his intuitive feeling for dance rhythms.
4. Handel, La resurrezione, Marc Minkowski.
Still one of Handel's most underrated, or at any rate most underperofrmed works, La Resurrezione explores the expressive power of colour in new ways with unexpected orchestration as the Dixit Dominus does.
With strong cast, Minkowski gives us a vital impression of a particularly fine sample of Handel’s youth.
posted by Armarius at 10:28 AM
2 Comments:
I also have some doubts about Minkowski's continuo practices. It is acceptable to use the viola da gamba to supply the harmonies with multiple stopping in appropriate contexts, and in the recitative Minkowski effectively uses different textures for participants in dialogue; but in several arias he inexplicably uses what you might call the ‘Polo style’, with a great big hole in the middle between voice and bass. I find it ugly and unstylish, especially in such a number as St John’s first aria in Part 2, with its busy, repetitive bass, and long for some rich harmonic filling. Still, this is a small point; and if there is some textual justification that has escaped me, that doesn’t make it sound better.
All of the pieces in this recording are taken from the composer’s Gradualia published in two volumes in 1605 and 1607. These collections contain liturgical music for the most important services of the Catholic church – a pretty provocative enterprise considering that their dates of publication coincided exactly with the Gunpowder Plot in England and its immediate aftermath. Here we have items written for Easter, the culmination of the church year which evinced some of Byrd’s finest music. The most obviously successful performances are of the longer items, where the architecture of the pieces can be gradually but majestically revealed. ‘Plorans plorabit’ is superbly sung, and the same exquisite control brings out the best in the tortuous dissonances of ‘Christus resurgens’. The shorter items are rather mixed, with a diffident ‘Adoramus te’, and some swallowed words in ‘Pascha nostrum’, but with a lively presentation of the theatrical word-setting at the beginning of ‘Terra tremuit’. At its best, The Cardinall’s Musick is unbeatable, but the 1990 recording of this repertoire by the William Byrd Choir under Gavin Turner (Hyperion), currently out of the catalogue, probably just has the edge in terms of consistency and sensitivity.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home