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             


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


REVIEW


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

 

 

alternatively
AmazonUK AmazonUS


Francisco de PEŅALOSA (c.1470-1528)
The Complete Motets
Inter Vestibulum Et Altare [2:38]
Tribularer, Si Nescirem [2:58]
Ne Reminiscaris, Domine [2:01]
Versa Est In Luctum [2:55]
Domine, Secundum Actum Meum [2:24]
Adoro Te, Domine Jesu Christe [2:11]
Ave Verum Corpus [2:41]
Nigra Sum, Sed Formosa [2:40]
Sancta Maria [2:33]
Unica Est Columba Mea [2:26]
Ave, Vera Caro Christi [3:24]
Ave, Vere Sanguis Domini [2:33]
In Passione Positus [3:33]
Precor Te, Domine Jesu Christe [3:42]
Pater Noster [3:11]
Ave Regina Caelorum [4:09]
Sancta Mater Istud Agas [3:00]
O Domina Sanctissima [3:53]
Emendemus In Melius [2:37]
Deus, Qui Manus Tuas [4:16]
Domine Jesu Christe, Qui Neminem [2:46]
Transeunte Domino Jesu [3:08]
Pro Cantione Antiqua (Michael Chance (counter-tenor); Timothy Penrose (counter-tenor); James Griffett (tenor); Ian Partridge (tenor); Stephen Roberts (baritone); Michael George (bass); Adrian Peacock (bass))/Bruno Turner
rec. 9-11 October, 1991, England? DDD
HYPERION HELIOS CDH55357
[67:53]

 

Experience Classicsonline


This is a sumptuous and uplifting CD of unaccompanied vocal music by the Renaissance Spanish composer, Francisco de Peņalosa. He lived from about 1470 to 1528, which means that he's a contemporary of Janequin, Taverner, Gombert and Morales. For every strain of purity in the music of these latter, that of Peņalosa shows a serenity and confidence which will delight - especially if it's new to you. The fact that there is only one other CD in the current catalogue dedicated to Peņalosa, albeit much more recent - from 2004 - the Missa In Granada with Dominique Vellard and the Cantus Chamber Formation on Christophorus 77263 - makes this Helios reissue very attractive.

The composers of the Spanish Renaissance were influenced by their Flemish counterparts. Working at the great courts in the royal chapels of Ferdinand and Isabella, and for the choirs of the eminent cathedrals at Toledo and Seville, they were able to evolve an expansive and consummately self-assured style which is strikingly unique. Turner and Pro Cantione Antiqua were obviously at pains to capture and reproduce the equability and grace of Peņalosa's music on this welcome set of finely-tuned performances. Their tempi are, for the most part, slow and measured without being either deliberate or stultified.

Since only a couple of pieces last more than four minutes, the challenge was to reproduce the stature and rhetoric which Peņalosa's style exhibits. And to do so without losing the emotional tautness. The Ave Verum Corpus [tr.7], for example, is an immensely moving piece: emotion is to the fore and barely restrained. And then it's present in the quietly touching Sancta Mater Istud Agas [tr.17], which ends gently - almost fades.

Yet the singers' engagement does not allow the melody of such motets to be subverted into gratuitous grief. Rather, their singing implies and explains how and why such feelings at that moment in the devotional experience should be so real and fervent. At the same time Pro Cantione Antiqua achieves a lightness of touch which suggests grace and delicacy every bit as strongly as they suggest conviction. Yet without a hint at idiosyncrasy. This is a powerful mix.

And quite an accomplishment when you remember where the debates about authenticity stood twenty years ago. Turner explains that he has made no explicit claims to authenticity in fashioning this recording. Yet one knows that at the same time he has stinted from overlaying his own, or the singers', personalities or interpretative preoccupations onto the music. Purity again without being insipid.

Perhaps the best way to describe how Turner and his forces achieve this is to think of an accomplished singer reflecting on longing in a Schubert Lied, or on lost love in a Verdi aria. In those cases we usually take the genres as 'fabricated'. Peņalosa's idiom aims to convey more universal, and universally-generated, emotions. Pro Cantione Antiqua communicates them by employing real gravitas, a studied detachment, almost. Yet with as much study as detachment!

We know enough about Peņalosa's life to be sure that he worked at first as a singer himself in Aragon; then at Seville; and spent time in Rome. He wrote almost exclusively sacred music… masses, mass movements, hymns and motets. We hear the surviving entirety of the latter on this CD. Although Turner recommends treating the CD as an anthology into which to dip and sample, it's good to have the 22 motets whose authorship is not usually disputed collected like this.

 The quality of the recording is good. Although the location is not given, the acoustic is appropriately resonant and the atmosphere sedate and serious without being grave. The booklet is up to Hyperion's usual standards and contains the texts in Latin with parallel English as well as a short introductory essay by Turner written in 1992. This is particularly valuable as to the provenance and current whereabouts of Peņalosa's manuscripts and sources. It ends with the sentiment, '…we hope to have revealed a hidden treasure of great value'. They have!

Mark Sealey 

see also Review by Brian Wilson

 

 

 
 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




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.