Customer Reviews

Cecilian Vespers

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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For an absolutely enchanting experience this 2 CD set of all of the vespers composed by Alessandro Scarlatti honoring the essence of music - St. Cecilia - is inimitable. Here is more Scarlatti than you ever knew was available and in the entire 56 works there is not a weak link.

Nicholas McGegan conducts the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale with a bevy of superb soloists - Susanne Ryden, Dominique Labelle, Michael Slattery who makes a very impressive debut - a tenor with style and flair whose career is young but very promising, Ryland Angel, Gonzalo X. Ruiz and Neal Davis - in lilting and dramatic performances, each one fresh and inventive, and each one performed with McGegan's usual penchant for understanding period music.

The recorded sound is superb: the first CD was recorded during a live performance and the second CD is a studio production. But the sonics of both are superb. This is music to transport us to another era and reinforces the fact that Scarlatti was a brilliant, forward-looking composer. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, April 06

A. Scarlatti's vespers for St Cecilia's Day are given a wonderfully alert live performance by Nic McGegan and the Philharmonia Barqoue. Nic's specialization in Scarlatti's dramatic choral works pays off brilliantly here with some superb contributions from the soloists including the stellar soprano Dominique Labbelle

Interpretation and sound are superb and give justice to these masterpieces of a great composer far too often neglected! As always with Scarlatti, one wonders at the modernity of his sacred music (it sounds like Mozart as a young adult) and his cunning use of the instruments to create a tapestry of textures that tells the untold tale behind the words and the singers.

... but on CD much of this huge performance of Alessandro Scarlatti's "Cecilian Vespers" sounds underrehearsed. Each of the soloists has a few ragged spots and a few bars of suspect tuning. Frankly the soloists' voices don't assemble well, to my ears, into any kind of vocal balance; they are all on their own trajectories. The chorus is solid enough, but not beautiful in sound. Nick McGegan is a masterful conductor of Handel, always bringing out the best from his Philharmonia baroque Orchestra and Chorus, but here, again to my ears, he makes Scarlatti sound far too Handelian, English rather than Italian. The bottom line is that this recording doesn't approach the musical standard set by Concerto Italiano and Il Seminario Musicale. It's worth hearing if you're a voracious Scarlatti fan, but if not, you might consider buying:
"La Santissima Trinita" - Europa Galante
"La Giuditta" - Alessandro Stradella Consort
"Inferno" - Modo Antiquo
"Stabat Mater" - Theater of Early Music with Emma Kirkby
"Sedecia" - Il Seminario Musicale with Gerard Lesne
"Cantatas, Handel - Scarlatti" - Il Seminario Musicale with Sandrine Piau