Phone

Tablet - Portrait

Tablet - Landscape

Desktop

WGBH Radio WGBH Radio theclassicalstation.org
  1. Back 1 step
  2. Album

Brazilian Adventures

Garcia,J. / Ex Cathedra / Skidmore,Jeffrey Release Date: 11/13/2015
Label: Hyperion Catalog #: 68114 Spars Code: DDD
Composer:  Brazilian Anonymous ,  José Maurício Nunes Garci ,  Cyro Souza ,  Luís Alvares Pinto  ...  Conductor:  Jeffrey Skidmore Orchestra/Ensemble:  Ex Cathedra (Early Music Ens.) Number of Discs: 1
Recorded in: Stereo Length: 1 Hours 17 Mins.

As Jeffrey Skidmore tells us in his absorbing booklet essay, the pieces presented here are some of the fruits of detailed researches that he has carried out during visits to Brazil over a three year period. He’s benefited also from the assistance of a number of expert Brazilian musicians and academics.

The core of this program is José Maurício Nunes Garcia’s Missa Pastoril para a noite de Natal (‘Pastoral Mass for Christmas Night’). Garcia composed the Mass in 1808 for choir and organ but three years later he rewrote it and scored the accompaniment for a small orchestra. There’s often a sense that this music could have been written by Haydn and I think that the Austrian composer would have delighted in the Read more woodwind writing and in the sheer cheerfulness of the music. Garcia makes quite a bit of use of a relaxed, rather graceful melody that first appears in the Kyrie. On that basis it’s a sensible decision to break the setting up on CD into segments interspersed with other music and, in any case, the whole Mass would not have been heard continuously in a liturgical context.

The other Mass setting is by André da Silva Gomes. We hear his setting of the Kyrie and Gloria from Missa a oito vozes e instrumentos. There wouldn’t have been room to include any more music on the disc in any event but I’m not sure if this is all that survives of the Gomes setting. Gomes opens with a short and joyfully extrovert Kyrie – this sounds nothing like a plea for mercy. The second Kyrie takes the form of an energetic fugue for all eight voice parts. The trumpets are very prominent indeed at the start of the Gloria, adding a real sense of festivity. There are several extended solo passages in this Gloria and almost without exception the solos are highly decorated, suggesting that Gomes must have had some very accomplished singers at his disposal. There’s another eight-part fugue at the conclusion of the Gloria; this is music of uninhibited celebration.

The remaining pieces on the program are much more modest in scale but all are worth hearing; everything that Jeffrey Skidmore has selected for this program is delightful.

As we have come to expect over the years the standard of performance achieved by Ex Cathedra is very high indeed. Twelve singers are used (4/2/3/3) and the band, who play on instruments of the period, number 16. There are many vocal solos, a good number of which sound pretty demanding, and each one is delivered with great style and conviction. In fact it’s a pronounced feature of the disc that the performers sound thoroughly engaged in the music. There’s a genuine air of discovery.

The recorded sound is excellent and the documentation is comprehensive.

- MusicWeb International Read less