"New" Music Log

[Todd]

I've yet to amass a even a medium sized Palestrina collection, but I am familiar enough with his work that I thought I ought to go for something big and juicy in the form of the Cantica Salomonis, or the Song of Songs, expressed in twenty-nine motets.  Oh yeah!  Well, not really.  So, the music is most excellent.  The singing, however, is not.  One can probably find fault in many places, but for me, the high voices are the problem.  There's an unappealing nature to the high parts.  It makes listening a chore.  (I think the high parts are taken by women only, though perhaps some boy sopranos are used.)  The lower voices sound more tonally alluring, but also less than tidy.  The Palestrina Ensemble Munich is not the most accomplished ensemble I have listened to.  As a slight saving grace, the few extra encores sounds slightly more appealing.  But overall, despite the involvement of living Schuberts, the recording cannot be counted a great success.

[Todd]

Now here's a composer I didn't know that I really needed to hear.  This is the second Mayr to pop up in my collection – Rupert Ignaz Mayr is the other one – and this Mayr has a claim to fame, such as it is, in the fact that he was a noted instructor of Italian bel canto opera composers, including Donizetti.  He was Bavarian by birth, but he ended up spending a lot of time working farther to the South.  This recording of not one, but two Messa di Gloria, one in E minor and one in F Minor, reveals Mr Mayr to be a composer of no little accomplishment.  The best shorthand here is to describe the music as a perfect blend of Carl Maria von Weber and Gioachino Rossini.  And that is why I really needed to hear this music.  Both works are in minor keys, but the energy levels bubble and the pace stays taut.  Severe religiosity is out; theatrical gestures are in.  Vibrance, showy set pieces for the soloists, and multiple very Weberian horn blats permeate the whole undertaking.  Mix in superb singing and really quite fine recorded sound, and this here is a winner.  It turns out that Mayr wrote gobs and gobs and gobs of music, including literally hundreds of liturgical movements that could be dropped in any old place.  It also turns out that conductor Franz Hauk is most devoted to Mayr's music and has recorded a decent chunk of it for Naxos.  I think I should probably investigate a bit more. 

[Todd]

A couple years ago, I picked up the excellent Josquin & the Franco-Flemish School box on Warner, and it contained several new to me composers, including Adrian Willaert.  I thought to myself I should really try something else by the composer, and now is the time.  This now almost thirty year old recording of the Missa Christus Resurgens and some smaller works fit the bill.  Things kick off with the Christus resurgens by Jean Richafort, which serves as the basis of the main work, and it sets the tone of all that follows.  And that is an intimate, beautiful, not too dense, easy to follow and generally just soothing and musical-warm-blanket recording.  The high voices dominate the recording, which is all to the good, and the singing sounds lovely and otherwise blended nicely.  This is one of those hour-long recordings where one just presses play and lets the good times roll. 

[Todd]

For no good reason, I've never listened to either Dvořák's Mass in D or his Te Deum.  I've heard his Stabat Mater (under Kubelik) and Requiem (under Ancerl), but not these.  Well, now was the time, I thought.  That no less than Antoni Wit conducts all but guaranteed success.  And a success it is.  The Mass, evidently scaled up from the original, smacks of 19th Century grandeur, but having flowed from the pen of Dvořák, the tunes are simply gorgeous, and even with the scale, it sounds like a slightly beefier, definitely sunnier approach to liturgical music that Fauré later mimicked-ish, at least in the quieter sections.  Sure, one can hear whiffs of Wagner in the brass in some places, but it's tasteful, restrained Richie.  It really sounds just splendid, celebratory, and lovely.  The Te Deum sounds more identifiably Dvořákian, and it is entirely extroverted and often most showy, though never garish, even in the most over the top moments. 

[Brian]

The Te Deum is my "secret" favorite Dvorak, a true hidden gem from the opening polyrhythms to the glittering full circle conclusion. The Wit performance is up to his standard, but the piece can be a little faster, and I wish he was still paired up with his amazing Warsaw band.

Wit is also responsible for the only Dvorak Requiem I'd put up against Ancerl, if you get curious.