Celi 2

The blend between the voices is finely controlled, the tone mellow and the tuning spectacularly accurate, giving rise to an organ-like sonority that is genuinely thrilling,” wrote Gramophone magazine, praising the Hilliard Ensemble’s four singers, who excelled in an extraordinary variety of music over a 40-year career. This seven-CD collection extends from the Middle Ages to the Baroque, offering music by composers from England, France, Flanders and Germany.

The convent of St Francis in Assisi is a place of pilgrimage and the founding location of the Franciscan order. In the baroque period novices hoping to enter the order were trained in music, and there is a long musical tradition there. Most of the performances here are world premiere recordings of baroque vocal compositions from the library of the convent of St Francis in Assisi. All the vocal pieces are for soprano solo (combined with solo alto in Finale's `Oh Quam Jubilat'), and it is thought that the solos may have been sung by young men. Here they are taken by very fine female singers, and the accompanying ensemble is made up of top players.

Sergiu Celibidache was one of the podium's great individualists whose idiosyncratic interpretations drive listeners either to scorn or to reverence. This compilation of broadcasts made during his Swedish years provides material for both views, though most listeners should come away awed by "Celi" at his best. The Sibelius Fifth, for example, is a great performance, incredibly intense within a spacious framework of epic grandeur. The Sibelius Second, while on a less exalted level, is painted on a similarly broad canvas with playing of remarkable concentration and power. The Hindemith, too, is outstanding, Celibidache probing depths few other conductors find in the work… –Dan Davis

Vox Iberica – Sequentia’s long-term project to record music from three of Spain’s most important musical sources – begins with music from the so-called Codex Calixtinus, a 12th century manuscript containing liturgical chant and polyphony in honour of Saint James the Apostle, otherwise known as Santiago, whose relics have been venerated by pilgrims since the Middle Ages in the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. For this recording, the eight men’s voices of Sequentia join to record the complete polyphony found in this magnificent collection of sacred music, including some of the earliest polyphony to be clearly notated in a European source.

Brancaleone and his followers go to the crusades. God allows them a safe crossing of the Mediteranean. Except that they did not sail on the sea but on a… lake! Brancaleone soon finds himself caught in the middle of a feud between… two popes, Gregory and Clement. In order to determine which of the two men is the true pope, Brancaleone must walk on hot coals. After this ordeal, accompanied by a dwarf, a witch, a leper and a masochistic penitent, Brancaleone continues his quest.In the Holy Land, he fights the unfaithful before facing Death in person. He is eventually saved by Tiburzia the witch who is reincarnated in the form of a magpie