MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             

CD REVIEW



Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively Buywell Just Classical


 

 

El fuego: Renaissance Music from Italy and Spain
Juan ARAŅÉS (d. c.1649)
Chacona:A la vida bona (1624) [3:16]
Adrian WILLAERT (c.1490-1562)
Sempre mi ride (1548) [1:51]
Francisco GUERRERO (1528-1599)
A un niņo llorando (1589) [3:56]
Pastores (1589) [2:09]
Pedro GUERRERO (b. c.1520)
La perra mora [2:13]
ANONYMOUS (c.1500)
Niņa y viņa (c.1500) [1:54]
ANONYMOUS (c.1550)
A Florentine Dance Suite (c.1550) [4:25]
Ben venga maggio
La Comarina (Saltarello)
En questo ballo
Zorzi (Saltarello)
Lo mio padre
El tu tu (Gagliarda)
Costanzo FESTA (c.485-1545)
Madonna, io mi consumo (1543) [2:38]
Manuel MACHADO (c.1590-1646)
Dos estrellas le siguen [3:06]
Nicola VICENTINO (1511-c.1576)
Canzon da sonar ‘La bella’ (1572) [3:18]
Claudio MERULO (1533-1604)
Canzon 23 ā 5 (1608) [1:42]
Giovanni Giacomo GASTOLDI (c.1554-1609)
L'innamorato (1591) [2:56]
Antonio de CABEZÓN (c.1510-1566)
Je fille quant dieu me donne de quoy (1578) [1:40]
Cristofano MALVEZZI (1547-1599)
Intermedio IV: Sinfonia (1589) [1:33]
Intermedio V: Sinfonia (1589) [1:50]
Intermedio V: E noi con questa bella diva (1589) [4:25]
ANONYMOUS (c.1556)
Riu, riu, chiu (1556) [2:18]
Matheo FLECHA (the elder) (?1481-?1553)
Dindirindin [2:15]
El fuego (1581) [11:34]
La Compaņia: (Sara Macliver (soprano), Danny Lucin (cornetto, mute cornetto, director), Mitchell Cross (soprano shawm, tenor dulcian), Glenn Bardwell (tenor sackbut), Bob Collins (tenor sackbut), Simon Rickard (bass dulcian), Elizabeth Pogson (violin), Victoria Watts (viola da gamba), Laura Vaughan (viola da gamba), Rosemary Hodgson (vihuela de mano, renaissance guitar, renaissance lute, theorbo)); Linda Kent (chamber organ), Christine Baker (percussion), Denis Close (percussion)
rec. September 2005, April 2006, Ian Roach Hall, Scotch Cottage, Melbourne
Texts and translations included
ABC CLASSICS ABC 476 5955 [59:13]

La Compaņia was established in 1997, with Danny Lucin and Mitchell Cross as its musical directors. Based in Melbourne, and drawing on a number of Australian instrumentalists specialising in early music, La Compaņia has worked pretty extensively in concerts and festivals in Australia. This is the band’s second CD; the first – which I haven’t heard – issued in 2000, was Music of the Spanish Renaissance (Move Records MD 3225). That CD presumably had a somewhat narrower focus than this second CD, a relatively loosely conceived anthology.

On seven of the nineteen tracks, the soprano voice of Sara Macliver is featured. She is well-established as a singer of baroque (and later music); her album of Bach duets with Sally-Anne Russell, on ABC Classics 476 118-3 was well received (see review) and here she shows herself well able to handle the different demands of earlier music. She sings with a kind of pert charm in the anonymous ‘Niņa y viņa’ and uses the top of her voice with great purity in Manuel Machado’s delightful ‘Dos estrellas le siguen’ which, with its relatively minimal accompaniment is a lovely contrast to the very busy music surrounding it on many of the other tracks. In the lengthy piece which gives the CD its title, ‘El fuego’ by Matheo Flecha, the elder, she handles the changing moods very effectively, though perhaps neither she nor the instrumentalists of La Compaņia quite persuade us of the intensity with which the fires of sin burn in the opening of Flecha’s ensalada (of which some will remember a marvellous version by the King’s Singers with the Harp Consort and Andrew Lawrence-King on Fire-Water, RCA 09026-63519-2); but at the piece’s conclusion she sings radiantly of the saving ‘pure water’ of the incarnate Christ.

As an instrumental ensemble, La Compaņia can offer a rich palette of colours and tones. Danny Lucin brings an attractive vocal quality (without exaggeration) to much of his work on the cornetto; the sackbuts of Glenn Blackwell and Bob Collins are played throughout with precision and appropriate power. Rhythms are lively and properly insistent – not least in the suite of anonymous dance music, compiled from a variety of Florentine sources, which draws on popular songs such as ‘Ben venga maggio’ and ‘En questo ballo’. 

It is good to hear Pedro Guerrero’s remarkable ‘La perra mora’, with its metre of 5/2, which and Antonio de Cabezón’s version of Maistre Gosse’s ‘Je fille quant dieu me donne de quoy’, both of which elicit some expressive playing from all concerned. 

Indeed, there’s nothing here that isn’t well worth the hearing. If I have a reservation it is the miscellaneous nature of the programme, in which it is hard to discern real continuities or patterns of development. Good as Michael McNab’s booklet notes are, they don’t really persuade one that there is any very precise unifying factor in the proceedings. Perhaps the example of, say Jordi Savall, has rather spoiled us – we now expect CDs of early music to have a clear theme, even an argument, to offer the listener. But perhaps it doesn’t have to be like that. If you simply want a miscellany of solo vocal and instrumental music from sixteenth century Spain and Italy this would be a pretty enjoyable one to have.

Glyn Pursglove

 

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.