Luis Dalvan

Victoria was the greatest Spanish composer of the late Renaissance. Compared with the prolific Palestrina the number of his works is not great; compared with Byrd, Victoria’s music is not so varied or wide ranging. Indeed, placed beside the enormous output of Lassus, Victoria’s achievement seems to be very restricted; there is none of the dazzling virtuosity and broad culture, none of the extraordinary diversity. Yet, in its narrow specialization in strictly liturgical or devotional function, Victoria’s music is not only the most perfectly suited to its purpose, but the most perfectly styled and fashioned of its kind, its emotional heart perfectly in accord with Roman Catholic liturgical ceremony in the Tridentine Rite. Even more than Palestrina’s, Victoria’s art is an expression of Catholicism as defined by the Council of Trent.

Like David Hill, Jeremy Summerly moves the music of each Mass on fairly briskly until the Sanctus and Agnus Dei, when a poignant contrast. The two motets on which the Masses are based are sung as postludes, and very beautiful they are, especially the idyllic O magnum mysterium. Finally, the short Verse est in Luctum (a setting of a section of the Requim Mass) by Alonso Lôbo, a Spanish contemporary, ends the concert serenely. The recording is excellent and this is a fine bargain.

Jean-Marie Leclair’s fourth and final book of sonatas for solo violin and continuo was published in Paris in 1743. It followed the composer’s return to the French capital from The Hague in the wake of the bankruptcy of his patron, the formerly wealthy merchant François Du Liz. Like the three earlier books, there are 12 sonatas in the publication, each of which has four movements.

This collection of music for guitar, brought together by Jose Luis Bieito as the musical element of his music+image binomis, Reflections, possesses a delightful balance of sounds. These are flowing, pulsing, mostly gentle sounds that tend to soothe and calm the listener's mind. Sounds that - through a variety of compositional techniques - tend to be sustained in time; the effects of which can sometimes capture a listener’s attention, holding it inside an extended musical moment, like a spell. When heard while viewing the accompanying (provocative, sometimes disturbing) images, the sounds can serve an additional function: grounding the listener's reaction, enabling the passage of emotion; like electricity discharging through a lightening rod.

Since the great boom in Cuban son, Luis Frank has become one of the great names of the second generation who keep Cuban musical heritage alive far beyond its borders. The current album intends to demonstrate how Christmas is celebrated in Cuba and the whole of Latin America: just like we celebrate it here, contemplatively, but with lots of joy and dancing too. This is a Christmas CD with a difference that will enrich your Christmas festivities.

Considerado como el más grande polifonista español, Tomás Luis de Victoria compuso su famoso Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae en Roma, donde se publicó en 1585, poco antes de su regreso definitivo a España. El conjunto La Colombina, en su versión original de los años 90 (María Cristina Kiehr, Claudio Cavina, Josep Benet y Josep Cabré), interpreta aquí una selección de las músicas para el Viernes Santo, grabación que se completa con una sorprendente Pasión según San Juan de un contemporáneo de Victoria, Joan Pau Pujol. Esta grabación se publicó por primera vez en el sello Accent en 1997.

Tomás Luis de Victoria was born in 1548 in Avila, the birthplace of St Teresa. Just as she seems to personify the religious ethos of sixteenth-century Spain (the good side of it, at least), so Victoria came to embody the best of the Spanish character in music. As a youth he learnt his art as a chorister at the Cathedral of Avila. So promising was he that he was sent to Rome at seventeen years of age, patronised by Philip II and by the Church, to study at the Jesuits’ Collegium Germanicum…

Et Jesum presents motets, antiphons, and mass sections by the Spanish Renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria, arranged for countertenor voice and accompanying stringed instrument. Both the laud (the Spanish version of the lute) and the more guitar-like vihuela are used by accompanist Juan Carlos Rivera. Rivera and countertenor Carlos Mena, a youthful alumnus of the Savall school, augment arrangements of Victoria's day with efforts of their own in a similar vein, and it would take a deep specialist indeed to pick out the 400-year-old ones.

The Norwegian six-member a cappella group, Nordic Voices here presents the extraordinary polyphonic music of Tomas Luis de Victoria, a Spanish composer whose music has continued to move people for more than 400 years, crossing geographical, cultural, and even religious barriers. This surround-sound recording comes ten years after a "warm, consistent and moving" (BBC Music) album of Lamentations, which featured pieces by sixteenth-century composers, including Four Lessons by Victoria.