Saint Preu

The laus perennis that the monks every day in their psalmody offer to the Lord, is adorned with hymns, antiphons and responsories; all chants drawn from the ancient gregorian repertory. With this daily practice and custom, the monks become almost the only custodians and specialists of this patrimony of the highest religious, cultural and artistic merit that is gregorian chant. The monks of Montecassino – always faithful cultivators of this venerable chant, proper to the lit- urgy of the Church – with the present CD want to make these melodies, which are an elevated form of prayer, resound also outside of the monastery walls. The recording was completed at the Tomb of St. Benedict and is intended as an affectionate hymn of sons towards their father and master: in fact, a good part of the liturgy of the Solemnity of St.Benedict of the traditional date of March 21 was performed.

Saint Just was a seventies Italian progressive group but not really reminiscent of the typical Italian sound. Influences from folk, psychedelic and classical can be heard in their music. The most remarkable instrument in their music is the vocals of Jane Sorrenti that float above the music. Her vocal delivery is definitely an acquired taste. The group released only two albums and the line-up is very different in these two albums. In the 1st album there were only three official members of which the saxophonist Robert Fix was not included in the 2nd album. For their 2nd album the remaining members Jane Sorrenti and Antonio Verde (classical guitar, bass) added electric guitarists Tito Rinesi and Andrea Faccenda as well as a drummer Fulvio Maras.

Unusually the liner note deserves a mention ahead of the music: the fine pianist Jeremy Denk, half of this regular duo, manages to encapsulate the elusiveness of French romantic music with such insight in a few sharp sentences, his words almost shape the way we listen to this superbly played disc. Saint-Saëns' wistful and emotional Sonata No 1 and Ravel's bluesy, ironic sonata have a whipped, airy quality. Joshua Bell plays with fire and finesse, with Denk a powerful ally. Franck's dark-light violin sonata, mysterious, ardent and far more than the sum of its parts when played as majestically as here, forms the centrepiece of this seriously beguiling disc.

Saint-Saens’s Etudes offer an intricate and scintillating panoply of the French school of technique (the basis and prophecy of what Jean-Philippe Collard so mischievously called Marguerite Long’s ‘diggy-diggy-dee’ school of piano playing). Yet as Piers Lane tells us in his alternately wry and delightful accompanying essay (obligatory reading for all lovers of French pianism), they can be as evocative (‘Les cloches de las Palmas’) as they are finger-twisting (‘En forme de valse’, to name but one). The left-hand Etudes, too, given their self-imposed limitation, are a fragile and poetic surprise. In other words Saint-Saens’s Etudes are more comprehensive than their equivalents by, say, Moszkowski or Lazare Levey (superbly recorded by Ilana Vered on Connoisseur Society and Danielle Laval on French EMI, respectively – neither issued in the UK).

Filmed live at Covent Garden's Royal Opera House in 1981, this staging of Camille Saint-Saens's opera takes on one of the Bible's most famous tales. After trying to force the Hebrews to worship his god, the Philistine ruler meets an untimely end at the hands of the prodigiously powerful Samson (Jon Vickers), who leads the Hebrews in a revolt. But beautiful Philistine Dalila (Shirley Verrett) uses her seductive wiles to weaken the strapping hero.

This programme reflects the full flavour and richness of English music and the instrumental and vocal repertory it inspired in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The rhythmic impulse of this repertory sometimes making use of ostinato culminates in the grounds, jigs, contredanses and so on that were all the rage at the time and led to the publication of John Playford's collection The English Dancing Master in 1651. Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, showing their familiarity with early sources from England, Scotland and Ireland, also emphasise the melodic aspect of these dances, which in the course of time became sung airs the soprano Fiona McGown and the baritone Enea Sorini complete a colourful instrumentarium. Finally, the light-hearted dimension of entertainment is present everywhere in this repertory, which was popular in the sense that it was universally practised at the time, achieving a fame that spread far beyond the British Isles.