Victoria: The Mystery of the Cross

Tomas Luis de Victoria (Artist), The Sixteen (Artist), Harry Christophers (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 15, 2005)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Coro
• ASIN: B0001N9ZIY
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #294,584 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

"This is what recording should be about ... excellent performances and recorded sound ... beautiful and moving." -GRAMOPHONE

Scholar, mystic, priest, singer, organist, and composer – six persons all rolled into one and that is, quite simply, why Victoria was the most outstanding composer of the Spanish Renaissance. His music, highly dramatic and emotional, fully reflects the heartfelt passion with which Victoria wrote for the church. These performances are of new editions, specially commissioned for this series, and thus never before heard on disc. Authoritative liner notes by the eminent musicologist who made the editions.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sweet Sixteen, Approaching Middle Age, March 6, 2009

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Victoria: The Mystery of the Cross (Audio CD)

There is not nearly enough of the music of Tomas Luis de Victoria on CDs, nor of Francisco Guerrero nor Juan Vasquez, nor any of the great Cathedral composers of the Golden Age of Spain, the 16th Century. Thus, on one hand I'm thrilled to see Harry Christophers and The Sixteen undertake this huge recording project, apparently all the motets of Victoria. Unfortunately, however, they're doing it poorly. They used to have some energy in their voices. Their recordings of Handel and Monteverdi were never my ultimate choices but they were worthy contenders. Now they sound more tired than The Tallis Scholars. They seem to equate sanctity with lethargy of tempo. The sum of four or more voices on a part is often less focused, less rich in timbre, than a single voice, and in this performance of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, by Victoria, each voice sounds like a committee.

5.0 out of 5 stars Victoria: The Mystery of the Cross, June 23, 2011

By 

Chanson - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Victoria: The Mystery of the Cross (Audio CD)

this CD which i ordered "standard shipping" and got it in the mail within 2 days, it is the best of the best CD ever heard re. classical chanting. I am so glad i purchased it, and listen to it often each and every day. Chanson from Washington DC.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "poor, lethargic" performance? Not to my ears, December 2, 2011

By 

Ralph Moore "Ralph operaphile" (Bishop's Stortford, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Victoria: The Mystery of the Cross (Audio CD)

It amuses me to read how first Mr Bruno in his review airily dismisses this recording and then his faithful acolyte readership rush to thank him and affirm the veracity of his comments without themselves actually having heard the disc in question.

So here's another - and, I suspect, less dogmatic and tendentious - opinion; one which is shared by those thousands of fans devoted to the extraordinarily beautiful and homogeneous sound produced by the Sixteen, who regularly flock to their live concerts and then buy their records, where they may hear the finest polyphonic choir performing today.

It strikes me that to accuse the Sixteen of sounding enervated and lethargic here, you would have to have the musical sensibilities of a bath mat and a complete misapprehension of both the purpose of this music and the venues in which is was and is properly performed. This is music of a vertical, serene, transcendent nature which aspires to elevate listeners heavenwards, to give them a proleptic foretaste of the peace which will succeed the sufferings so vividly depicted in de Victoria's agonising suspensions and discords. To allot one voice to each part is an aesthetic travesty and not historically justified, whatever the HIP converts maintain; this music needs the sweep and resonance of an angelic choir, not the game squawkings of one doughty soloist per line at a jaunty tempo. It needs the prolonged and generous cathedral acoustic whereby a body of voices float into the cupola and benefit from a reverberation of several seconds.

Having just watched an hour long celebration of de Victoria's music by the Sixteen on BBC4, I can confidently assert that there is nothing tired or turgid about Harry Christopher's direction of his exceptionally gifted choir, nor do the singers seem anything other than wholly rapt by the music they so movingly sing. God spare me (literally) from the pallid, woefully under-powered trilling of a so-called "authentic" performance and give me the glorious multiplicity of twenty voices blended with perfect intonation.

I couldn't wait to get this record and hear this music performed as it should be. The presence of women's voices is no bar when their timbre and colour is so close to that of trebles and the choir's attention to dynamics and shaping is masterly; every word is given its proper weight and drama.

Amazon reviewing should be about offering an honest, informed, unbiased response, free of chauvinism or prejudice. I find that I invariably disagree with Mr Bruno's tastes and therefore offer mine as a counter-balance; the Amazon reader may then do as he or she sees fit - but if you love the greatest composer of the Counter-Reformation, my advice is buy this CD.