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2024-03-19
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2022-07-08 08:03:45
Gareth Wilson & choir of Girton College, Cambridge return to the richly textured music of Marc'Antonio Ingegneri for a second disc on Toccata Classics
Marc'Antonio Ingegneri: Missa Voce mea a 5 and Double Choir motets; Choir of Girton College, Cambridge, Historic Brass of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Jeremy West, Gareth Wilson; TOCCATAReviewed 6 July 2022 (★★★★½)Girton Choir's second disc of music by Ingegneri reveals a wealth of hitherto unknown music, the rich textures amplified by the participation of historic brass to superb effect.In 2019, Gareth Wilson and the choir of Girton College, Cambridge, did a tour to Lombardy culminating in a performance at Cremona Cathedral where Marc'Antonio Ingegneri was director of music until his death in 1592. Following this tour the choir recorded a disc of Ingegneri's music for Toccata Classics [see my review]. For the past few years this has been the pattern, that the choir tours a programme in the Summer and then records it, having gained familiarity with the music. This whole pattern was shattered by the events […]
2022-05-27 09:23:32
Cruel Ecstasy: Exaudi in Gesualdo at Norfolk & Norwich Festival
Carlo Gesualdo Carlo Gesualdo: Madrigals from Books V and VI, Sylvia Lim, Joanna Ward; Exaudi, James Weeks; Norfolk & Norwich Festival at St Andrew's HallReviewed 22 May 2022 by Tony CooperGesualdo madrigals, punctuated by the two fulfilling contemporary works by Sylvia Lim and Joanna Ward, made a perfect programme for Exaudi's Norwich débutExaudi Vocal Ensemble has been exploring the enigmatic and challenging madrigals of Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, Count of Conza, for over a decade and, not surprisingly, their 2019 album Gesualdo: Madrigali received rave reviews and awards from around the world for the ‘emotional wisdom and beauty’ of their performance. The emotional wisdom and beauty of their performance for this Norfolk & Norwich Festival concert shone through, too, featuring as it did a host of well-loved madrigals from Gesualdo’s Fifth and Sixth Books published in 1611. Basically, they can be seen as musical ‘twins’ concluding with a collection of […]
2022-04-18 14:01:36
Nicola Vicentino, 2022
[…] service of the cardinal and assumed the post of maestro di cappella in his hometown at the Vicenza Cathedral. His later life isn’t clear: it seems that he spent some time in Milan, applied for a position in Bavaria but didn’t receive it and died during a plague in Milan in 1576. One of Vicentino’s arcicembalos with 31 notes to the octave is extant, it’s now on display in the Bologna International music museum. Ensemble Exaudi is one of the few ensembles that attempts to interpret the music of Vicentino. It’s easier, at least in theory, to sing Vicentino’s quarter-tones and one-fifth-tones as you don’t have to have a very special keyboard instrument, but in practice you have to be a virtuoso performer with an excellent ear to follow composer’s directions. Here is Vicentino’s Musica prisca caput. Listen carefully! And here is his Madonna, il poco dolce, another remarkable piece. […]
2022-04-12 16:09:00
Semperoper Mozart: Overture: La clemenza di Tito, KV 621 Haydn: Symphony no.93 in D major Mozart: Masonic Funeral Music, KV 477/479a; Vesperae solennes de Confessore, KV 339: ‘Laudate Dominum’; Requiem in D minor, KV 626; Ave verum corpus, KV 618, interspersed with Gregorian chant and readingsNikola Hillebrand (soprano)Marie Henriette Reinhold (contralto)Sebastian Kohlhepp (tenor)Mikhail Timoshenko (bass)Ulrich Tukur (reciter)Dresden Chamber Choir (chorus director: Tobias Mäthger)Dresden Kreuzchor (chorus director: Karl Pohlandt)Sächsische Staatskapelle DresdenManfred Honeck (conductor) Whilst much of the Staatskapelle Dresden is in Salzburg for the Easter Festival, those players staying at home are offering a good deal of Mozart: complementing, for those able and willing to take the two-hour rail journey, the current Mozart festivities in Berlin. (Salzburg, ironically, is giving Wagner, Bruckner, and Shostakovich.) Manfred Honeck and the Dresden orchestra here paired Mozart with Haydn, culminating in an imaginative presentation of the Requiem—part of it, anyway—interspersed with plainsong and […]