Pierlot Ricercar Consort

There’s no way around it. Arianna Savall sounds exactly like a young Emma Kirkby, and if you like that straight-toned, sharply focused soprano quality, with just the bare hint of a vibrato at the very ends of phrases, then you’ll find Savall very satisfying and you’ll easily appreciate her superb interpretations of these rarely heard vocal works from 17th-century Italy. She begins with a magnificent cantata by Marco Marazzoli that sets the tone for the whole program–a “moral canzona” that focuses on the “literary theme of the rose”–and her vocal prowess is evident in her ability to lend enough dramatic force to the work to keep us interested for its entire 13 minutes. She lends a particularly warm and ingratiating quality to the beautifully wrought final minutes of the same composer’s “moral cantata” O mortal, whose text refers to the fate of the Biblical Samson, and repeatedly urges, “Do you desire even greater glories? Then learn how to conquer yourself.”

Philippe Pierlot and the Ricercar Consort's 2006 recording of Bach's Magnificat brings back the glory days of historically informed performances, those halcyon days in the 1980s when musicians, empowered by scholarship and energized by virtuosity, were recording the Baroque repertoire with the zeal of the newly converted. Though Pierlot and his musicians are of a younger generation, they bring a missionary fervor to the music, a program of Bach's Magnificat, BWV 243, and Missa Brevis, BWV 235, interspersed with two well-chosen organ works, the Fuga sopra il Magnificat, BWV 733, and the Präludium und Fuga, BWV 541. Pierlot's textures are clean, his rhythms buoyant, his colors bright, and tempos brisk, but not rushed in the fast movements, and contemplative but not moribund in the slow movements.

The Stabat Mater Dolorosa is a sequence, not a chant, and no unified melody was established for it until the mid-nineteenth century; it was even banned for a time by the Council of Trent, but restored to liturgical use in the late 1720s by Pope Benedict XIII. Much as Prohibition did not stem the tide of alcohol use, the Council of Trent's ban on the text did not diminish the popularity of the Stabat Mater. It was during the official, 160-year-long period where the Stabat Mater was not heard in churches that Giovanni Felice Sances composed the title work on this Mirare CD Stabat Mater, featuring Carlos Mena, Philippe Pierlot, and the Ricercar Consort.

From the beginning of time songs of mourning, sorrow and lamentation have been a part of Western music. Aristotle had written that nothing was more powerful than rhythm and song for imitating all the turmoil of the soul. Composers of the Baroque Period strove to deal with nothingness and eternity by exploring the utter depths of the heart. And this is what these songs are all about.

There is no shortage of performances of the two Bach cantatas on this release by the Ricercar Consort and the Collegium Vocale Gent, under the direction of gambist Philippe Perlot. They are two of the most imposing among Bach's examples of the form, with two large sections, a variety of movement types and elaborate orchestration, and Bach strove to impress with both. Good readings are available in cycles by conductors John Eliot Gardiner, Masaaki Suzuki, and others, but there's a lot to be said for Perlot's approach, which has been developed over a deliberate set of recordings of cantatas that have something to say to each other.

Spanish countertenor Carlos Mena is not one of those who evoke the powerful castrati who might have sung these sacred arias in Vivaldi's day; his voice is smooth and precise, with a tendency toward emotional restraint. This isn't blood-and-guts Vivaldi, but it's quite lovely. Even the final Nisi dominus, RV 608, with its virtuoso arias and sharp contrasts, is kept under control at all times rather than being treated as a set of operatic numbers. Mena is technically flawless in this work (listen to the rather chilling long notes in the "Cum dederit dilectis," track 22), which stands somewhat apart from the rest of the program – the intent is to close the proceedings with a burst of energy after two sad pieces that offer refined tragedy in Mena's readings.

Bach wrote his passion-oratorio during the first year of his assumption of duties in Leipzig. The city fathers were rather strict in their Lutheranism, and forbade anything that remotely smacked of the newly-found opera craze that was infecting the country at the time, and seeped into the passion music of such luminaries like Telemann. As a result Bach was constrained, if such a word can be used, to employing the gospel only as the source of his libretto. Because of this the St. John Passion has perhaps the greatest text of any passion ever written, and Bach was determined to make the piece worthy of the scriptures he was setting.

Sous les empereurs autrichiens de la maison des Habsbourg, les arts et tout particulièrement la musique jouèrent un rôle très important dans le cérémoniel de l'affirmation du pouvoir de la cour et de l'empire. Bien que Ferdinand III fût le premier des empereurs autrichiens à avoir composé lui-même de la musique, son second fils et successeur Léopold (1657-1704) était bien plus doué que lui…L'un de ses professeurs fut Antonio Bertali. Son répertoire trop peu connu et qui mérite d'être redécouvert est d'une extrême variété musicale, clairement influencée par la musique théâtrale: elle ne lassera jamais l'auditeur, qui pourra toujours s'attendre à d'agréables surprises après chaque cadence.

Les deux compositeurs choisis, l’un anglais, l’autre allemand, nés tous les deux la même année 1685, sont assurément les représentants majeurs du patrimoine musical baroque. Les œuvres présentes sur ce disque ont toutes été composées à des moments particuliers de leur vie, en marge de leurs commandes habituelles destinés souvent à des personnages de haut rang, et se distinguent par la constante recherche de nouvelles inspirations et styles de composition.