Customer Reviews

Victoria: The Mystery of the Cross

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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.

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.

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.