Responsorium

The music throughout this set, which consists of Dino Saluzzi originals, is quite charming. The combination of Saluzzi's bandoneon, acoustic guitarist Jose Maria Saluzzi, and bassist Palle Danielsson works quite well, and both the arranged and improvised ensembles are melodic. Some of the music consists of modern tangos and there are also ballads and more jazz-oriented pieces. The mood is sometimes wistful and nostalgic, but it is not derivative of the past. A delightful set.

Carlo Gesualdo's name will always conjure up a special image: When he discovered that his wife had been unfaithful, he had her and her lover murdered and left on his palace steps, impaled on the same sword. Ghastly, but gripping–and, oddly enough, his harmonies, dissonances, upsetting chromatic passages, and general complexity can also be seen as "ghastly but gripping." Gesualdo was wealthy enough that he never had to depend on a patron; he could therefore write whatever he pleased, in whatever, far-out (to this day), experimental style he chose.

With their bold harmonies, their counterpoint of unequalled refinement and their raw emotion, the Tenebrae Responsories are the sacred counterpart to Gesualdo’s last two books of madrigals, published the same year (1611). Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants here prolong their critically acclaimed exploration of those six increasingly venomous collections. Their interpretation of the Responsories for Maundry Thursday subtly shifts towards the conscious dolorism of the late works of the Prince of Venosa.

Procesional of the religious of the Sacred, high and holy military order of San Juan de Jerusalén (S.XIV-XV). Music and liturgy in a noble female monastery: the Royal Monastery of Sijena.

When it comes to old Italian vocal music, the Padua-born Italian choir "La Stagione Armonica" under the direction of Sergio Balestracci has repeatedly demonstrated its high musical level: "The sound they produce is extremely appealing in its firm expressiveness and in the way in which Balestracci's interpretive details somehow create a hint of simple but fervent piety, "wrote the press about his album on deutsche harmonia mundi with the responses that Alessandro Scarlatti composed for Holy Saturday.

Tomás Luis de Victoria’s OFFICIUM HEBDOMADÆ SANCTÆ is one of the most compelling examples of creative genius in a composer, a toweringly poignant and masterpiece on the Passion of Christ, a pure but infinitely subtle creation, Ad majorem Dei gloriam.