Madona x

With a capaciously-filled boxset of a dozen CDs made up of attractive individual programmes and entitled The Spanish Guitar, Glossa reintroduces the superb playing of José Miguel Moreno. And with recordings from 1991-2004 which still sound fresh and vivid today. A new essay and all the sung texts are included in the physical booklet that completes this limited-edition set.

Extremely prolific, highly uneven, and tremendously influential, Gian Francesco Malipiero came to be regarded – even by other Italian composers – as the most original musical mind of his day and place. His music fused modern techniques with the stylistic qualities of early Italian music.

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.

Era is the eponymous debut album by Eric Lévi's new-age project Era, first released in 1996 and re-released in 1998. Era mixes Gregorian chants and occasionally world music with contemporary electronic arrangements. It is reminiscent of new-age music projects such as Enigma, Gregorian, and Deep Forest. Lyrics are written in Pseudo-Latin and English, and some are based on beliefs of the 13th century French Christian Catholic Apostolic Roman, the Cathars. The band has sold more than 12 million albums. They are best known for their singles "Ameno" and "Madona". Era's live shows and music videos often feature artists dressed in medieval or traditional clothes and armour. Usually, actors Pierre Bouisierie and Irene Bustamante perform at Era shows.

These are good performances of music by a wildly inconsistent composer. Stylistically, Malipiero (1882-1973) was all over the place. Gabrieliana, obviously, is an arrangement of music by Gabrieli; the Madrigali are arrangements of vocal works by Monteverdi (from Book VII of his madrigals). The Serenata manages to be cute and quirky without a single memorable melodic idea, while both the 5 Favole (fables) and the Venetian songs belong to the composer’s late, almost atonal style. The latter work even begins with a 12-note row, ……..

David Hurwitz @ classicstoday.com

The repertory of the Spanish vihuela from the 16th century remains little investigated, partly because few original instruments exist; when vihuela works appear on recordings they are often played on the lute or guitar. This is a shame, for the instrument has its own sound and a repertory (albeit one that often claimed playability on various instruments) that exploited that sound. The vihuela is large, with six pairs of strings running up a large body and long neck, and the music on this album exploits the instrument's rich sonority and capability for ornamentation rather than the rapid runs, called redobles in Spanish, that are characteristic of music for other plucked stringed instruments.

Vihuela Music Of The Spanish Renaissance - Christopher Wilson (1990) {Virgin Classics}
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© 1990 Virgin Classics | 0777 7595962 8
Classical / Renaissance

The vihuela is not a viol, it is a sort of lute. Vihuela and lute coexisted in Spain but the composers wrote only for the former. The works played in this recording were mainly published between 1535 and 1554; Daza's book (1576) and a collection of other authors (1593) mark the end of the era of the vihuela. Then the instrument lent its shape to the guitar, as you can infer from the cover of the CD.