My first encounter with this all male ensemble "Beauty Farm"
Beauty Farm founded 2014 by Markus Muntean and Bernhard Trebuch is a vocal group focused to the Franco-Flemish polyphony of the renaissance. The international ensemble is based in the carthusian monastery at Mauerbach (Austria). The singers are members of well known ensembles like «Capilla flamenca», «Huelgas Ensemble», «Vox Luminis», «Collegium Vocale Gent» and «Graindelavoix».
Opinions elsewhere range from
raving to
cautiously positive.
My first impressions. The music is not transposed up and receives the deep & sonorous "continental" treatment, thank God.....
The style of the ensemble has been compared with that of The Sound and the Fury. There is some resemblance in that the approach is more personalised, less detached. But it stops there: TSAF are at their worst slap dash, uneven and over the top in their "emotional" approach. Beauty Farm occupies, with Cinquecento, the middle ground, compared to the more "detached" Egidius and Singer Pur on the other side of the spectrum. What I like is the overall sound of the ensemble - individual voices blend well together, no "jarring" counter tenor....
Technically, this recording debut is no match for the ensembles mentioned before (excluding TSAF). The ensemble work doesn't run like clockwork in terms of timing and intonation. It's good, but not to same same level of perfection. This affects the level of vocal clarity and obscures the texts. I have to say that this improves during proceedings and the motets on the 2nd come off better. What also improves on the way is the flexibility - at first it seemed they picked a pace and stuck to it from motet to motet.
Oddly, there appeared a strange low soft rumble in the first two motets on the 2nd disc. After first thinking it came from the neighbours, I came to the conclusion that one of the tenors came to close to the microphone. This is slightly distracting and could have been avoided by a retake...
All in all, I basically quite like their approach and their ensemble sound.
And they present an unmatched complete collection of Gombert's motets.
Which, by the way, are idiosyncratic and not very accessible, according to some reviewers..... An acquired tatste, with recommended listening of only a few motets at a time... I honestly have NO clue what they are on about....
Despite some of the mentioned quibbles, this is an excellent issue which is perhaps not perfect but certainly more than good enough for me. Looking forward to the 2nd volume!
Q
