Gabrieli

The first complete recording of the keyboard works of Andrea Gabrieli (1532-1585), one of the most famous and influential composers of the late Renaissance and the most important representative of the Venetian School. A native of Venice, he went to Germany to study with Lassus. Later he became organist of the famous San Marco in Venice, the most important post in Northern Italy at that moment.

Following in their series of Gramophone Award and BBC Music Magazine Award winning recordings, Gabrieli’s first Handel recording in over a decade is particularly special – recreating in painstaking detail the very first performance of L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, given in 1740, with additional instrumental repertoire including a Handel organ concerto and two concerti grossi. With a reputation as peerless Handelians, Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort & players bring meticulous research to every performance and recording project, and are joined on this disc by a stunning selection of soloists.

There is no shortage of discs around featuring transcriptions of Renaissance music for brass. Whilst played on modern instruments the main difference here however is that London Brass, several of whom play period instruments in other ensembles, have enlisted the specialist knowledge of Philip Pickett to direct them.

The Gabrieli Consort and Players return to the programme that put them on the musical map when it was originally recorded and released in 1990: A Venetian Coronation 1595 is a musical re-creation evoking the grand pageantry of the Coronation Mass for Venetian Doge Marino Grimani. His love of ceremony and state festivals fuelled an extraordinary musical bounty during his reign and formed the background to the musical riches of the period, especially to the works of Giovanni Gabrieli. With cornetts, sackbuts and an all-male consort, Paul McCreesh fully exploits the dazzling polyphony of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli’s music and captivates the audience in a theatrical and ceremonious performance.

Musicalische Compagney gets it as close to the music's original design as the current state of knowledge about the 17th century allows us. The program of Gabrieli's works from German sources collected on this CD is excellent.

Here's another of Paul McCreesh's "as it might have been" reconstructions, this time of the First Mass of Christmas in Venice's St. Mark's church "around 1600". McCreesh's customary focus on bringing to life the pomp and ceremony of a huge celebratory occasion offers huge rewards for the listener as musicology, the finest performing forces, and first-rate sound engineering combine to deliver a bold and beautiful "you are there" experience. The whole thing centers around Cipriano de Rore's seven-part mass Praeter rerum seriem, a parody on a six-part motet by Josquin. It's a gorgeous setting, and McCreesh's vocal ensemble really digs into the emotional and spiritual heart of this music.

By combining the highly skilled Royal Academy of Music Brass and the Juilliard School Brass, trumpeter and director Reinhold Friedrich has created a virtuoso super group that is perfectly suited to the glorious antiphonal music of Giovanni Gabrieli. Not only is such a large contingent of exceptional brass players capable of producing the rich and resonant sound that is characteristic of Gabrieli's music, it also produces a credible impression of the performance space, which is usually quite difficult to convey on a standard recording. This album was made in St. Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, whose barrel-vaulted ceiling and brick-and-marble floor produce fantastic acoustics with a depth and breadth reminiscent of the spacious Byzantine interior of San Marco Cathedral, where Gabrieli served as maestro di cappella.

Paul Goodwin’s A Christmas Collection (his debut disc with the Academy of Ancient Music) offers an anthology of Schütz’s shorter dialogues and motets by way of an alternative to the composer’s own Christmas Oratorio. Anyone who has ever endured that drily austere work will be pleasantly surprised by the rich textures and vocal expressivity of much of the music here, and by the dramatic wit, say, of the little Annunciation scene, ‘Sei gegrüsset Maria’, for male alto Angel and soprano Mary, in which the mother-to-be can’t help interrupting her heavenly visitor, first in sheer amazement, then in her eagerness to confirm her unblemished virgin state.

Paul McCreesh is one of the leading figures in the movement for historically informed performances, and he established his reputation primarily in Renaissance and Baroque music. Yet he is versatile and noted for his varied interests, and he has delved into the Romantic repertoire for this spectacular 2010 recording with Ensemble Wroclaw of Hector Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts.

Of all the liturgical reconstructions that Paul McCreesh has been offering over the past decade, this is easily the most elaborate. It's astonishing to think that Bach's parish church would have celebrated Epiphany (the 12th day of Christmas, January 6, usually a weekday) as elaborately as this program, and it's fascinating to think of the congregation of the Thomanerkirche anticipating the event around 1740. The entire service is included in the recording, much like the Catholic Masses on record that include the celebrant's prayers and Preface before the Sanctus (chanted in Latin even here), the Scripture chanting (in German here, of course), and all the odd versicles. The sermon is only six minutes long, just a hint of a longer discourse (it would have been at least an hour long, according to the notes).