Joel Cohen is a master of the Early
Music anthology. Collections such as
Tristan and Iseult, New
Britain, The American Vocalist
and Simple Gifts (all first issued
on Erato) are well-chosen anthologies,
vivaciously performed and arranged so
as to play off one against another,
inviting the hearer to make all kinds
of comparisons and connections. In most
cases the programmes were honed in live
recitals before being recorded. Here’s
another such collection, first issued
on Erato and now - like some of the
others mentioned above - reissued on
Apex.
First issued in 1993,
Nueva España came relatively
early in the wave of recordings of baroque
music from the new world. Indeed, this
has been a particularly fascinating
and productive area of musicological
research - especially in pioneering
work by Robert Stevenson - and of recording
in recent years. On CDs such as Masterpieces
of Mexican Polyphony, recorded
by the Westminster Cathedral Choir under
James O’Donnell - actually recorded
for Hyperion before the Cohen anthology
- Chanticleer’s Mexican Baroque
(Teldec, 1994) and, more recently, Florilegium’s
Bolivian Baroque (Channel Classics),
The Harp Consort’s Missa Mexicana
(Hyperion) and Ex Cathedra’s Moon,
sun and all things (also Hyperion),
we have had the chance to listen to
some startling and beautiful music.
Composers such as Juan Gutiérrez
de Padilla, Tomas de Torrejó
y Velasco (whose opera La Púrpura
de la Rosa has now had its premiere
recording) and Juan de Araujo are beginning
to emerge as distinctive musical personalities.
Cohen’s claim, in the notes for Nueva
España, that "a neglected
master like Araujo could compose circles
round any number of old country second-stringers"
now seems a perfectly reasonable claim.
Most of the composers
named above play their parts in Cohen’s
kaleidoscopic image of cultural interchange.
Renaissance Spanish polyphony, Caribbean
rhythms, texts in Latin, Spanish, Quechua
(the language of the Incas) and Nahuatl
(a Mexican language), African-influenced
dances and much else – the elements
are very various and, for the most part,
magically blended. The sound textures
are constantly changing as Cohen deploys
his forces in ever-changing combinations.
More or less European sounding choral
singing is succeeded by the Negro Women’s
Choir of the Les Amis de Sagesse; sackbuts
and shawms dominate some pieces, guitars
and harps are to the fore in others;
Latin percussion is employed discretely
in places. Some of Cohen’s effects are
hard to justify historically ... which
doesn’t stop them being richly enjoyable.
It seems unlikely, for example, that
male and female voices would have been
heard together in the performance of
the music of the church.
There are other quibbles
one might make – about the relative
vagueness of the anthology’s geographical
focus, for example, since the title
suggests that this is a collection of
Mexican music but much of it was composed
elsewhere (e.g. in Peru). But one forgets
one’s quibbles in the sheer pleasure
to be had from much of the music as
it is here performed. Particular pleasures
include Tomas de Torrejón y Velasco’s
A este sol peregrino,
a sprightly celebration of light both
divine and literal; Lienas’ setting
from the Lamentations
of Jeremiah, a piece of grave and moving
beauty; a delightful little Pabanas
(a kind of pavan) by Lucas Ruis
de Ribayaz, played on a double strung
harp, an exquisite lullaby (Xicochi
xicochi conetinzle) by Gaspar
Fernandez and Juan Garcia de Zéspiedes’
Conviando esta la noche
which brings the CD to a radiantly celebratory
conclusion. But, in truth, there isn’t
a boring track.
There are very useful
notes and texts and translations are
provided. The recorded sound is bright
and detailed. The only objection one
might raise is to do with its very nature
as an anthology – it tempts one into
wanting more of particular composers
or styles. A good anthology like this
is both rewarding and frustrating –
the frustration, indeed, is paradoxically
a measure of how good it is. Even given
the availability now of fuller accounts
of some of the kinds of music sampled
here by Cohen, it would be wrong to
think of Nueva España
as superseded by its successors. There
is much that fascinates and delights
to be heard here.
One small puzzle, incidentally,
is that in its documentation the CD
is sometimes called Nueva España
and sometimes Nueva Española.
Glyn Pursglove