Tag: Renaissance

I. Dalheim, K. Mulders, P. Bertin, D. Sagastume, V. Sordo, Ll. Vilamajö, D. Hernández, M. Savazza, Ch. Immler, P. Stas, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, Herspèrion XXI, Jordi Savall
76:06
AVSA9922

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] find this disc tiresome. It contains fine music by one of the best composers of his day, performed by capable musicians. Yet if it were a meal, it would come over-seasoned to conceal an underlying blandness. There is too much contrived beauty or animation or suavity at the expense of the music itself – a sort of early music for airports. Bells are so ubiquitous that they become comical in their incongruity. Then to begin dolorous choral works there is the cliché of the funereal drum, beside the rather desperate jollity of some of the instrumental pieces. Sustinuimus is a lovely motet overlarded with an unnecessary accompaniment of assorted winds and strings, bowed and plucked. Innsbruch  is downright slushy, with too many different arrangements crammed into the one piece. Worst of all is Quis dabit  in which the fussy arrangement distracts from the merits of this fine if doleful work: shades of Glenn Miller from the accompanying instrumental ensemble, irritating percussion, fidgety alternating solo and full vocal passages, and tastefully exaggerated lamenting on the part of the singers. Isaac’s music can stand tall without this overindulgent treatment. The two following tracks are cut from the same cloth: more bells bong in the exquisite and undeserving Sancti spiritus, then Angeli, archangeli  rambles on while the sonneur has a field day. And so on, past an achingly, self-consciously beautiful Circumdederunt me  to the final track with the full String of Pearls treatment in the accompaniment, further fidgeting between solo and full choral passages, and enough tings and dings from the sonneur to render Evelyn Glennie envious. In all reluctant humility I entirely understand that many people will find a disc of this sort most attractive, and if it is going to draw folk to Isaac’s music, as presumably Sting’s disc drew folk to Dowland, then well and good; there is room for this sort of presentation, so long as there are recordings of Isaac’s music that let it speak, or sing, for itself, rather than as some in the 21st-century wish to attire it. Oh, noisy bells, be dumb.

Richard Turbet

Dufay Ensemble, Eckehard Kiem
224:50 (4 CDs in a plastic box)
Brilliant Classics 95365

[dropcap]J[/dropcap]acobus Vaet had the misfortune to fall out of favour twice. A prominent composer in the middle of the 16th century, he ended up as imperial Kapellmeister in Vienna, although like all but a handful of his contemporaries he lapsed into obscurity within fifty years. Curious then that it was Vaet whom Friedrich Blume chose to feature beside the great Josquin in the opening 1929 volume of his seminal Das Chorwerk. Sadly where the latter went on to be completely rehabilitated, the former somewhat sank back into obscurity. This four CD set of his choral works, a drop in the ocean of his large output but a generous helping nonetheless, serves to outline his strengths and weaknesses by providing a representative cross-section of his sacred music. This proves not to be an unalloyed delight for a couple of reasons. The Roches’ authoritative Dictionary of Early Music  describes Vaet’s early work as ‘solidly imitative’, and this is true of a fair percentage of the music recorded here, before we get into the later, more daring repertoire influenced by Lassus (and perhaps, as the programme note claims, the Venetians, although I found this harder to pin down). The polychoral repertoire is to my ear the most successful, particularly the Lassus-like setting of Ferdnande imperio, while the rather extravagant claims made in Peter Quantrill’s programme note for his mastery of dissonance seem to me a little overblown. The other slight drawback to this set is that the singing is not quite as confidently accurate as it might be – perhaps the main reason why the project has appeared on the budget Brilliant Boxes label. A lot of the singing sounds tentative and a bit workaday, and there is some distinctly uncomfortable intonation. This is a pity, but together with the decidedly patchy quality of the music it makes this set an informative resource rather than a listening delight. Having said that, many of the works here are receiving their premiere recordings, so anybody genuinely particularly interested in the music of Vaet or more generally in the repertoire of the Renaissance Viennese Hofkapelle will want to invest.

D. James Ross