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Pilgrimage To Santiago / Pickett, New London Consort

Release Date: 10/09/2007
Label: L'oiseau Lyre Catalog #: 4759103 Spars Code: DDD
Composer:  Alfons X (El Sabio) ,  Anonymous ,  Martin Codax Performer:  Catherine Bott ,  David Roblou ,  Kristine Szulik ,  Stephen Henderson  ...  Conductor:  Philip Pickett Orchestra/Ensemble:  New London Consort Number of Discs: 2
Recorded in: Stereo Length: 2 Hours 6 Mins.

This remarkable two-disc album is far and away the most interesting recording I have heard in recent months. Scholarly, entertaining, sometimes brilliant, at times passionately moving, it offers a spectrum of Spanish music, monophonic, polyphonic and instrumental from the twelfth to the early fourteenth century. We are led along the pilgrim way,—the Camino Frances -towards the magnificent shrine of St James 'in the Field of Stars", listening as we go to the tales of the pilgrims, to their horrendous adventures and to the miracles wrought for them by the Virgin Mary. We pause fora moment to hear a lament for King Sancho III, with its wide-ranging and beautiful mixolydian melody. At another resting-place we share the distress and longing Read more of the girl on the hill overlooking Vigo's bay as she patiently awaits a lover who will never come. Then once more we are swept along the pilgrim way by the compelling rhythm of such pieces as A Madre de Dens, or by the rollicking pace of Ben coin'aos—holding our breath an instant when the Virgin appears in a mysterious light; then onwards again, as we approach at last the shrine itself, marching this time to the sound of a genuine pilgrim's song, Dum paler familias, with high and low voices alternating.

Catherine Bott, the principal soprano, brings to her performance not only a high sense of drama, but also a confident grasp of the style required by each piece. She is able to adopt, when needed, that typical Spanish chest voice, or she can be plaintive, or passionate, or she can even resort with stunning effectiveness to speech—a low voice laden with emotion—when the music of one of the Cantigas de amigo is missing in the manuscript! The men, led by the tenor John Mark Ainsley, prefer the rich declamatory style demanded by the slower, more solemn pieces, notably Regi perennis, a gorgeous Benedicamus trope with alternating voices and organ. The rhythmic interpretation by the men of another delightful Benedicamus trope, Congaudeant catholici, is convincing and well under control.

The carved figures of the four-and-twenty Elders which adorn the Portico de la Gloria are shown in great detail, playing a whole range of medieval instruments. There is also a lively description in the Codex Calixtinus of an international gathering of music-making pilgrims, together with a list of contemporary instruments. Philip Pickett, inspired by this description and by the carvings, has brought together an impressive ensemble of instruments played by experts, both individually, and as an 'orchestra'. The instrumental accompaniments and the interludes, often the weakest part of any medieval reconstruction, are to my mind one of the strong points of this admirable recording.

-- Gramophone [7/1992]
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