Customer Reviews

The Antiphonal Music of Gabrieli

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is one of the top handful of brass albums available. It is a once-in-a-lifetime recording - many of America's top brass players reading through polyphonic music of Gabrielli. Playing, intonation, and ensemble are all exactly what you should expect: outstanding. Also, this album is not the result of hours upon hours in the studio - the rehearsal and recording took place in a total of nine hours (the Chicago/ Cleveland/ Philadelpia brass ensemble part). That aspect adds further to this CD's special place in the listening catalogue.

This CD falls basically into two parts: the Chicago/ Cleveland/ Philadelpia brass ensemble and E. Power Biggs/ Boston Brass Ensemble. I find the triple brass group to be more of the attraction than the organ and smaller brass group. E. Power Biggs has numerous other recordings, but this is the only one made by the combined forces of three of America's top brass sections. The 13 tracks of Gabrielli are more than worth the price. Still, with the inclusion of Armado Ghitalla from Boston, the performer list for this album reads like a "Who's Who" of American orchestral brass players.

Don't be thrown off by the thin neckties on the cover - fashion may have moved on, but the musical strength of this album has not wavered at all. Notes are detailed and excellent, and the price is lower than more recent but lesser quality CDs. If you buy one album of brass instruments, this should be it.

Hello everyone, I have a reccomendation........... BUY "THE ANTIPHONAL MUSIC OF GABRIELI"...... Recorded in 1959 and 1968 with the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble, The Cleveland Brass Ensemble, and the Chicago Brass ensemble... all playing together, guess who the horn players are? Mason Jones, Dale Clevenger, and Myron Bloom. This recording is simply incredible... it is a MUST buy for everyone, I have never heard such fine brass playing, the unity and sense of ensemble is incredible, and the musicality is amazing. It is even incredible that somehow they got all of the legends from Chicago, Cleveland, and Philadelphia together to make this recording back then....anyways.. this is definetely a must hear, it's probably the best CD I have added to my collection. The CD is digitally remastered by Sony... providing a rather unique surround sound... the different ensembles come in through different sides of your headset or speakers as you would hear them if you were at the live performance... its truly amazing.... BUY IT!!

If you've been into brass for 40 years, you probably already know that this is a very unusual gathering of the top of the top!
My only complaint is with the web site sound samples being MONO !
This album is in STEREO and really portrays the placement of the 3 major antiphonal quintets! You won't be disapointed.

Imagine a pastry chef of a future age who sees a perfect color picture of an historical artifact known as a "hamburger." Using this image, he perfectly recreates it using the tool of his trade, the primary ingredients being meringue for the bun and mousse for the burger. The result is absolutely delicious - in fact, a superlative dessert.

Sometime later, a legitimate hamburger recipe is discovered. The pastry chef is roundly derided for his "recreation," an historically inaccurate artifact. He is disgraced.

But happy. As are the many millions who continue to enjoy his concoction.

For genuine hamburger, look elsewhere - this is not Gabrieli as heard in St. Marks' during the Renaissance. But for one of the most spectacular musical "desserts" you will ever enjoy, click the "buy" button immediately. Brass players have rightly sung their Hosannas to this recording since its release in the late 1960's, but you don't have to be a brass player to be almost literally "blown away" by some of the most exciting playing of any sort ever released on a commercial recording.

The documentation is even better in this CD re-release than it was for the original LP, including not only the original liner notes confessing the logistical near-impossibility of getting the three finest orchestral brass sections in the world together in one room for a full weekend of recording, but additional commentary from a performing participant and great contemporary brass players who - in a very real sense - owe their own spectacular careers to the inspiration they received from this release.

But most of all there is the music. The players - the brass sections of the Philadelphia, Chicago, and Cleveland Orchestras - had never before worked together, and rehearsed and recorded the entire LP in nine hours over the course of one weekend. The immediate cameraderie and spontaneity are clearly evident, eclipsed only by the fact that these were some of the finest virtuoso musicians in history, regardless of instrument. My personal advice is to wait until you will bother nobody, turn the knob to "11" (with a nod to "Spinal Tap"), and let your bones vibrate and your spine tingle.

And don't forget to lick your fingers!

A delectable bonus is the organ and brass music from a second release featuring E. Power Biggs and members of the Boston Symphony from the same era. This would be an excellent release in its own right, with particularly fine playing from solo trumpeter Armando Ghitalla, but - to be fair - it was unwise to pair it with one of the most storied brass recordings in history.

I had this on vinyl as a youngster. When I saw, had to buy to see if it was anywhere near as good as I remembered.

Wow.

Formula - Guys in Philly call up their friends in Cleveland and Chicago for a day of Gabrieli. Nine hours start to finish - rehearsal, recording, don't bother tuning up.

Herseth, Jacobs, Clevenger, Johnson, Adelstein, Jones, these are Men of Brass. Glorious.

Playing this stuff on modern instruments - and perhaps stylistically closer to Mahler than original performance - may offend the purists. I don't care a whit. This is as good as it gets, ever.

If you are a brass player, BUY THIS NOW.

This is one of the greatist recordings of Gabrieli I have ever heard. Not only the playing amazing, but the digital remastering is superb. It goes without saying that Gabrieli is some of the best polyphonal music out there. This CD is worth every penny.

Where will you find Herseth, Cichowicz, Adelstein, Rosenfeld, Johnson and Wohlwender and their persepective sections performing together. The first part of the Disc consists of the Brass ensembles of Chicago, Philly, and Cleveland conveniently placed left center and right stereophonically. The most noted brass sections featuring all the players together as you have never, nor will ever hear again. Then the Boston Brass Ensemble takes over in the second half with a bombastic set of pipes(Organ). Liner notes are the coup de grace with a couple priceless pictures, and the quintessential score card. "You can't tell the players without a program." Brass lovers, especially trumpet players should not be without this one. Canadian Brass cannot compare.

This recording unifies arguably the 3 best brass sections from American Brass orchestras in a performance of the antiphonal music of Giovanni Gabrieli. The Chicago, Philadelphia, and Cleveland brass sections are used here and they work together as groups as well as they ever did with their corresponding orchestras. This was recorded without conductor, rehearsal, or even a tuning note, however, this is irrelevant when looking at the result. Given performers of the caliber of Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Arnold Jacobs, and Gilbert Johnson it is little wonder that this fine quality could be achieved with minimum preparation. I have looked at a number of other examples of this music including recordings by the Empire Brass and the Canadian Brass (and friends) and neither comes close to the emotion and beauty of this performance.

The different groups played directed off the vocal and instrumental parts written by Gabrieli making any adjustment for transposition in their head on sight, thus allowing them all to be as much focused on the music as possible as they were not looking at 3rd generation arrangements which always tend to leave out markings. These possibly were the best brass performers in America at the time and their interpretations are unified through exceptional listening across the ensemble for intonation, style, and tempo. A slightly non-justifiable reason that I hold for this album's excellence is the raw energy and beauty of this unprepared collaboration. In the time of Gabrieli, rehearsals were rare, and musicians would, on a daily basis, sit down and perform music that they hadn't studied, and while these are not the original instruments for which Gabrieli wrote, the quick pacing of this production (one weekend) to me lends more on the positive side for the enjoyment of the listener.

In short, this is a remarkable collaboration of some of the best performers on fantastic Renaissance literature and worthy of owning merely for that fact, and when combined with live and engaging performances where the music is played expertly from one section to the next off of each individual, this album becomes a gem for anyone with an interest in the brass ensemble sound.

The purists have a good point - this recording is not historically accurate. In Gabrieli's time most written music was for sacred events. I'm sure the church officials would have objected to the volume level and intensity of this recording. Composers in the Renaissance and Baroque periods were pretty much slaves to their employers. I think that if Gabrieli had present day instruments and full performance control he would have performed his works differently.
If you love quality brass music read the five star reviews and buy this album!

Despite the recent arrival of historically informed Gabrieli performances, this album from the veritable Stone Age of Renaissance and Baroque performance, played by brass musicians more accustomed to and familiar with Tchaikovsky and Wagner, is still the standard by which to judge all recordings of the oft-played Gabrieli oeuvre, made famous by Robert King's brass arrangements of the 1930s. American-made trumpets, trombones, French horns, and tubas replace the mahogany Italian cornetti and sackbuts, but the effect is stunning.

Reading as a veritable "Who's Who" of American brass players of yesteryear, this Sony re-issue features the Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Chicago Philharmonic brass ensembles joining teams in a tribute to the teamwork ethic and purity of interpretation characteristic of the ideal brass player. One senses the sophistication and spirituality of this music (after all, these were called the "Sacrae Symphoniae" by Gabrieli himself, who worked for the Basilica of St. Mark's in Venice) and yet the simple warmth, as American as apple pie, emanating from the musicians themselves (Note: no players from the New York Philharmonic, are there?). It is striking how the ensembles are able to create and maintain such well-constructed (like the arches of a Romanesque cathedral) lines and phrases and at the same time provide such an appropriate and fulfilling focus on the contrapuntal nature of the Sonati and Canzoni. The antiphonal nature of the pieces is captured in the amazing engineering and re-mastering by the boys at Sony.

Haunting, complex, jubilant, the antiphonal brass music of Giovanni Gabrieli are beautiful examples of the Late Italian Renaissance aesthetic, and this recording suggests what all the fuss is about.

NOTE: Actually, the CD is a compilation of two older LPs, one of which is featured on the cover (the Gabrieli) and the other of which features music for brass and organ by both Gabrieli and his Roman contemporary Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643), played by the Boston Brass Ensemble and none other than the legendary E. Power Biggs on the Harvard University pipe organ.