A CD of chiefly mournful
music, with the Lamentations of Jeremiah at its heart?
Can’t be much fun? Think again: this is not lugubrious
music; rather it emphasises the beauty of lamentation.
If anything, Padilla’s setting of
Versa est in luctum,
my harp is overturned in the dust, is less affective than
those of other renaissance and baroque composers, with
whom it was a favourite text of mourning. (Victoria’s setting
is available for comparison on another Sixteen recording,
CORSACD16033 – see below for details). Also, despite the
title, not everything here is penitential.
Though born in Málaga
and generally regarded as one of the most important Spanish-born
composers of his time, Padilla spent most of his working
life in Mexico. After holding posts at Jérez and Cádiz,
he was in Mexico by 1622; there he became
maestro de
capilla at Puebla Cathedral in 1629. A great deal of
his music survives, including some 35 sacred vocal works,
chiefly for double choir, and over eighty
villancicos.
This is not the first
recording to contain his music but it does offer a welcome
complement to the only other such CD which I own,
Missa
Mexicana on Harmonia Mundi, where his exuberant music
forms the centrepiece of a concert superbly performed by
the Harp Consort under Andrew Lawrence-King. (HMU90 7293,
but, if you look around, you may still find this on bargain-price
HMX290 7293, bundled with the 2006 Harmonia Mundi catalogue – see
review.)
With the wonderful
Missa Ego flos campi at its heart,
that HM recording is probably the place to begin listening
to the music of Padilla, but I guarantee that, if you purchase
it, you will soon be adding the new Coro CD to your wish
list.
The new recording gets
off to a wonderful start with the versicles and responses
probably intended for a festal celebration of Vespers,
Deus
in adiutorium, O God make speed to save me/O Lord make
haste to help me/Glory be to the Father, etc. Ex Cathedra/Jeffrey
Skidmore on a recent Hyperion CD (
Moon, sun and all
things, CDA or SACDA67524) are marginally faster than
The Sixteen, whose tempo is, in turn, slower than that
of Westminster Cathedral Choir on another Hyperion CD – see
below. The Sixteen’s middle way seems to me ideal.
These opening versicles
and responses are followed by an elaborate eight-part setting
of the Psalm
Mirabilia testimonia tua. Surprisingly,
this psalm is prescribed for the office of None, a minor
office which rarely received such elaborate treatment.
The versicles and responses and this psalm were included
on a 1990 Hyperion recording
Masterpieces of Mexican
Polyphony (Westminster Cathedral Choir/James O’Donnell,
CDA66330, available to special order only – may we expect
a reissue on Helios?)
Not surprisingly, the
larger Westminster choir takes these pieces at a more sedate
pace, more suited to the acoustic of the cathedral building,
but there is no sense in which the performances by The
Sixteen sound rushed. The same is true of the Lamentations
for Maundy Thursday, also common to the two recordings.
The received opinion is
that Westminster Cathedral Choir approximates more closely
to the sound of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Roman
Catholic performance than a professional group like The
Sixteen, but this assumption begs a number of questions,
not least whether one would really want to hear the sound
of a Mexican choir, circa 1630. I’m sure that the sound
which Padilla heard in Puebla Cathedral – or even in his
native Spain – was far more amateurish than that produced
by either The Sixteen or the Westminster choristers. I
keep in my collection a recording of Victoria’s
Missa
Pro Defunctis and Cererols’
Missa de Gloria a 8 solely
as a reminder of how off-key non-professionals can sound
in this demanding music. (Escoliana & Capella de Música
Montserrat/Ars Musicæ de Barcelona/Ireneu Segarra on a
long-deleted EMI/DHM CD.) None of which, of course, is
meant to reflect on the Westminster choristers.
If you want the Victoria,
go for The Tallis Scholars – a splendid bargain on a 2-CD
reissue (CDGIM207 with other ‘Renaissance Giants’ – see
review – or
differently coupled, with other funereal music, on another
2-CD bargain, CDGIM205) – or The Sixteen on CORSACD16033.
Mention of that earlier recording by The Sixteen has brought
to my attention the fact that we don’t seem to have reviewed
it; I’m about to make amends.
Another recording (Padilla,
Music
of the Mexican Baroque, Cappella Rutenberg, 1999,
on the RCM label – available in the US but not, I think,
in the UK) also contains several of the works on this
Coro CD. Again on that recording,
Deus in adiutorium is
slower, though
Versa est in luctum and
Transfige,
dulcissime are faster than the performances by The
Sixteen and the Lamentations are taken at about the same
pace as here. Performances by The Sixteen do tend to
be a little brisker than the competition, but I have
no quarrel with their tempi here.
The
Stabat Mater is
one of the great Marian texts, commemorating the anguish
of the Mother of Jesus at the foot of the cross. Padilla’s
setting is much shorter and less affective than the well-known
Pergolesi setting of a century later. Neither here nor
in the other works of lamentation on the CD does the composer
invite us to wallow in misery; nor does the pace adopted
by The Sixteen encourage any such wallowing.
The
Missa Ave Regina
Cælorum is not quite the equal of the
Missa Ego
flos campi on the Harmonia Mundi recording but it
varies the penitential mood on this Coro CD. Both these
masses are based on texts associated with the Virgin
Mary and both are well worth hearing.
Ave Regina is
one of the antiphons addressed to Mary at the end of
Compline – perhaps it would have been more appropriate
to have performed this piece just before the mass which
is based on it. Be that as it may, Padilla’s
Ave Regina and
another such antiphon,
Salve Regina, bring the
recording to a fine conclusion.
The performances by The
Sixteen are as close to flawless as one is likely to hear
this side of eternity, with an excellent team of soloists
credited in
Pater peccavi, and the recording does
the singing full justice. The acoustic of St Paul’s, Deptford,
may not match that of Puebla Cathedral, but Coro have found
an excellent recording venue here.
The Sixteen are download
pluralists, so this recording is available from classicsonline.com,
whence I obtained it, from Chandos’s theclassicalshop.net
and from emusic.com; it doesn’t seem yet to have joined
the Coro recordings on iTunes. The versions from classicsonline
and theclassicalshop come in 320kbps sound, the highest
quality for mp3 and fully acceptable as far as I am concerned,
though it would have been nice to have a lossless alternative
(wma or wav). I can’t speak for the version on eMusic,
but I have never yet been disappointed with the quality
of their downloads – the very occasional tracks which have
proved defective have always been restored to my account.
The booklet, offered free
on the Chandos website, is handsome and informative. The
texts and translations which it includes are essential – how
about offering these in future, classicsonline and eMusic?
I would recommend getting
to know the music of Victoria first – and, perhaps, that
of Guerrero: see my recent
review of
a fine Helios reissue of the latter’s
Missa Sancta et
immaculata on CDH55313 – then, perhaps the Harmonia
Mundi recording containing the
Missa Ego flos campi.
I’ve withheld the ‘thumbs
up’ accolade only to encourage listeners new to this music
to start with Victoria or Guerrero, then move on to the
Harmonia Mundi CD with the
Flos campi mass. After
that, I can almost guarantee that you’ll want the new recording – order
the CD or download it now in anticipation.
Brian Wilson