Customer Reviews

Pergolesi - Stabat Mater / Ricciarelli, Benedetto Marcello Orchestra (Jubilaeum Collection)

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

After being disappointed with Rossini's Stabat Mater in the Jubilaeum 2000 series, I was hopeful that Pergolesi's would be better. Alas this is not so. The audio is perhaps the worst I have yet come across. The accoustics are terribly flat and dead, and sound as if the performance was recorded in a padded cell and not the Basilica Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome. The audio selection is Dolby 5.1 and 2.0 but I noticed that each of the two sopranos had her own microphone and they looked as if they were just small mono models. For much of the time their voices came mainly from the front and rear right speakers, so I changed my seating 90 degrees to the right and listened that way for a while. There was a distinct improvement in what had been a non-existant stereo image! I can only conclude from this that the channels have been mixed wrongly. On track #6 the level of the blond soprano's voice was so low at times as to be barely audible above the orchestra!

I'm really sorry I can't give a better review. My recommendation is to give this one a VERY wide berth and spend your hard earned cash on something else.

I want my money back! "

Terribly performed, horrendously recorded! Static and ugly as staged! Three reviews so far, all one-star! Tell you something?

There are at least twenty quite various performances of Pergolesi's sublime "Stabat Mater" on CDs, and roughly half of them are excellent. My own favorite among them is by Il Seminario Musicale with singers Veronique Gens and Gerard Lesne. That CD also includes Pergolesi's "Salve Regina" and his Sinfonia in F major for cello and continuo.

Pergolesi: Stabat Mater /Bonney * Scholl * Les Talens Lyriques * Rousset
Pergolesi, Scarlatti: Stabat Mater
Pergolesi · Scarlatti - Stabat Mater / Bertagnolli · Mingardo · Concerto Italiano · Alessandrini
Pergolesi - Stabat Mater / Gens · Lesne · Il Seminario musicale · Lesne

I would not purchase this recording based on the reviews it has received but I have purchase other recordings in this series and they are excellent, of the highest caliber.