PALESTRINA
Master of the Renaissance
Six Masses, Two Motets & The Lamentations
Pro Cantione
Antiqua/Brown/Turner
Recorded 1988/91/92
REGIS RRC 4002 4CDs
[275'.42"]
Bargain price (around £6 per disc)
For aficionados of this period music these discs will do much to satisfy.
The 16th century composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina became
a singer and organist in his home town from which (as was the custom) he
took his name. From 1551-1554 and again from 1571 until his death in 1594
he served as maestro di capella at the Papal Court in Rome. In between he
held a number of posts elsewhere. This was a period when music was subject
to all sorts of restrictions, regulations and edicts issued by the ever-changing
Popes and the ecclesiastical courts, something which Palestrina, who seems
to have been a strong-minded, principled man, accepted with varying degrees
of compliance. For example the Missa Papae Marcelli (for six voices) was
composed after such a meeting at which it was decided that music for Holy
Week was to be kept simple and solemn, the text clear. Palestrina delivered
in all three aspects. The Missa Assumpta est Maria and its bright textures
of two sopranos (male) is one of his most positive creations, the paraphrase
masses (taking existing single-line melodies and treating them to all sorts
of complex polyphony) masterpieces of construction.
The members of Pro Cantione Antiqua (formed back in 1968) constitute a vocal
classy act, many of them familiar names on the concert platform. With the
likes of Michael George, Stephen Roberts, Neil Jenkins, Ashley Stafford,
Ian Partridge, Christopher Keyte, and Michael Chance in the cast list the
point will have been well and truly made. The idiomatic singing of this
distinguished ensemble is impeccable, their phrasing creamy, the text crystal
clear, while the recording balance in the resonant acoustics of either St
Jude's, Hampstead or St Alban's, Brook Street is simply splendid.
Christopher Fifield
Performance
Recording
