Messa

In the interim between 2018’s dark jazz-infused stunner Feast for Water and the recording of its follow-up, Close, Messa guitarist Alberto Piccolo taught himself how to play the oud. The fretless stringed instrument would end up playing a central role on the band’s new album, both for its sonic contributions and its ability to serve as a kind of totemic passport that allowed them to travel from their home in northern Italy to the Middle East (and beyond.) Messa are a doom band, nominally, but they’ve never been limited by the tropes of the genre. Every song on Close illustrates their exploratory spirit. “Hollow” and “Pilgrim” highlight Piccolo’s oud playing, which to these untrained ears sounds like the work of an old pro rather than a relative neophyte. “Suspended” opens with burbling Rhodes piano, while “Orphalese” leads with smoky saxophone—both holdovers from Feast for Water, both even richer in texture this time around. “Leffotrak” is a 45-second hardcore palate cleanser, nestled between two doom epics. Frontwoman Sara Bianchin is the album’s MVP. Her powerful voice is pliable enough to pair brilliantly with any stylistic detour her band cares to take, and it can accelerate from diaphanous whisper to booming roar in a split second—and back again. It’s the best vocal performance on a metal album so far this year.

As regards the quick and complex evolution of Lieder within the timeframe of a few decades, the relationship between poetic text (lyrics) and musical composition undergoes some variations which are worth underscoring. The term Lied indicates primarily a literary genre, a strophic composition (leit means precisely “stanza” in German), whose translation as “song” should not be intended literally; it is similar to our speaking of “canto” in Homer or Dante, i.e. to indicate poetic texts which “only putatively could be accompanied by music” (G. Bevilacqua).

For a few decades now, Fritz Reiner's recording of the Verdi Requiem (one of his rare stereo recordings not made for RCA, and not with the Chicago Symphony) has lurked in the shadowy corners of Decca's catalog, appearing only on budget LPs and CD two-fers. Now, in its latest incarnation as part of the Decca Legends series, it may at last get the recognition it deserves. Reiner's rendition has several things going for it, not least of which are the superstar soprano and tenor soloists.

This disc is a tour de force, a world premiere recording of stunning music splendidly performed. The unjustly obscure Antonio Maria Bononcini was appointed late in life to be maestro di cappella in Modena, a post which allowed him to pour his store of invention into two grand sacred works, a Mass and a Stabat Mater. Conductor Rinaldo Alessandrini engages deeply with the composer’s imagination, opening up his dense counterpoint and delicately binding together his vocal and obbligato lines. The musical rhetoric of the Concerto Italiano is spellbinding, particularly when band and singers heighten gestures to surge powerfully towards a passage’s final cadence. However heated their delivery becomes – and the Stabat Mater does sizzle – the artists never rush. This is particularly crucial for bringing out Bononcini’s modulations and textures, which, because they shift rapidly, need space to breathe.

Before turning his attention to opera, Puccini wrote a number of wonderful works that are perhaps less well known, even if they already put his full genius on show. This is particularly true of the astonishing Messa di Gloria, whose evocative power and shimmering colours well deserve the exceptional cast on this recording. Indeed, a special passion inspires the soloists and chorus gathered around Gustavo Gimeno and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg.