Luis Dalvan

Portuguese composer Pedro de Cristo is nowhere near as familiar as Duarte Lobo or Manuel Cardoso, who may show up on general concerts of Renaissance choral music. Cristo's music was never published and was largely lost to history until some painstaking research work, described in the booklet of this Hyperion release. That is likely to change after this 2022 release by the eight-voice choir Cupertinos, which made classical best-seller charts late that year. The music is lovely, with the limpid, reverential treatment of text found in the works of Cristo's greatest Spanish contemporaries. There are long homophonic stretches in the motets that have a starkly emotional effect. The Missa Salve regina, whose motet exemplar is included, is more thoroughly polyphonic, but Cristo's orientation toward directness and clarity remains. Sample the gorgeous Crucifixus section.

This album provides the recording of two chamber music works, possibly the most important of the 20th century: The Quartet pour la fin du Temps (Messiaen) and Quatrain II (Takemitsu), both for an unusual instrumental group: clarinet, violin, cello and piano. The Quartet pour la fin du Temps was inspired by the tenth chapter of the Book of Revelation and it is dedicated to the Angel of the Apocalypse who lifts his hand toward Heaven and says: « There shall be time no longer, but at the day of the trumpet of the seventh angel the mystery of God shall be consummated ».

Isaac Albéniz's Suite Iberia took the composer some four years to complete, finishing it only shortly before his death. Consisting of 12 dance movements spread across four "notebooks", Iberia is a work culminating a career of capturing the essence of Spanish music and folklore. Successful performance of the suite relies on the performer having an innate and unwavering understanding of the Spanish musical idiom, exquisite detail, and nuance of ornamentation, and the ability to savor every note and every chord.