Customer Reviews

Vivaldi: Stabat Mater /Scholl * Ensemble 415 * Banchini

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The critics are right: this recording is remarkable. This CD has won a Gramophone award, 4f Telerama, 10 Repertoire, and a Diapason d'Or. It has also made the list of the 50 Best Baroque Recordings (BBC Music). Listen: I'm not even a particular fan of Andreas Scholl, but this is one of my most favorite recordings (in a collection that numbers almost 1,000 CD's). Scholl is uniquely suited to the repertory such as this. His angelic voice may not always rise to the occasion in opera (although his performance in Solomon certainly challenges this assumption), but that same angelic voice is always at home in sacred music - blending calm reverence with a hint of emotion, in a manner that is both beautiful and heart-breaking. Listen to his Stabat Mater to know what I mean. Scholl's voice is also quite at home in the secular cantata Cessate Omai Cessate, a cry of unrequited love, albeit more elegaic than passionate. At the surface, this recording, featuring some of the world's most beautiful melodies, is an easy listening (is there a melody more ravishing than Larghetto from Cessate?). But the listening is also revelatory and rewarding because it leads to new layers of meaning and expression on each new listen. gkolomietz@yahoo.com

Almost everything Ensemble 415 records is worth buying. With Andreas Scholl as soloist, this must be the star in their crown to date.

The secular cantata Cessate, omai Cessate is a real bonus. It's said to be "popluar" although personally I cannot remember having seen it advertised in live performance, ever. It's a flashy show-off piece for countertenor, and Andreas Scholl has plenty to show off. You won't hear vocal fireworks like this very often. First time hearing it will take your breath away ... make your hair stand on end.

The intro to the Stabat Mater - in full, not abbreviated as in some recordings - is the sacred mood music Filae Maestae Jerusalem. This piece brings the house down whenever it is performed live, too rarely, and Scholl gives it incredible depth. The steady, ominous rhythm is fabulously rendered by Chiara Banchini.

The Stabat Mater itself continually builds and falls away again as the insights of the writer of the original poem are successively laid before us. Andreas Scholl gives each stanza its own full impact but never loses the flow of the narrative. The last sections, in which the witness (of the Mother's agony at her Son's execution) turns from spectator to pray-er, are a miracle of sensitivity and expression. Andreas Scholl is a master.

This is without doubt an amazing dics!

Vivaldi's setting of the Stabat Mater is simple yet profoundly moving and life enriching.. personally, I found it touched me more than Pergolesi's beautiful version. Coupled with a secular cantata (Cessate omai cessate), and several other instrumental works, it is not hard to see why Vivaldi's music has stood the test of time.

Scholl by far, has proven himself a true and most gifted artist. With a honey-toned voice, he weaves for us a delightful canvas of sound (notably in the arias of 'Cessate' track 5 and 7 and the Stabat Mater), and the ease of his vocal techniques and abilities is quite remarkable.

The only other Stabat Mater I own is the Kowalski/Negri on Philips, and I have yet to hear the Chance/Pinnock on DG. But comparing the Scholl and Kowalski, one finds that Scholl takes the opportunity to stroll and allow the words to 'breathe', thus making it more meaningful and reflective, most notably in the adagio "Quis non posset" of the Stabat Mater. Listening to this, it is hard to argue that this is music of aching beauty and it never fails to touch the soul.

The accompaniment of Banchini & Ensemble 415 is flawless and forms a very intimate partnership with Scholl. It's good that they are given the chance to shine in the string works.

All in all, this disc is an amazing achievement and quite deservedly winner of the Gramaphone Baroque Vocal Award for 1996.

Happy Listening!

I write this review some years after first hearing this recording and after hearing a number of more recent recordings by other countertenors.

I was brought up on the James Bowman / Academy of Ancient Music recording made in the 1970s under the direction of Christopher Hogwood. That recording is still my lifelong favourite. However, it is clear to me that Andreas Scholl has presented us with probably the best Vivaldi "Stabat Mater" recording to date. I like Robin Blaze's recording very much and Michael Chance has also recorded a very satisfying "Stabat Mater". I listened to David Daniels' recording on headphones in a shop and it was patently obvious to me that his recording was ridden with vibrato and he seemed unable to get away from a frankly operatic approach to this great work. I tolerate David Daniels' vibrato in Baroque operatic music, only because he has such a great voice, but he was out of his depth in this piece of sacred music.

Andreas Scholl's voice is very smooth and his range is well integrated. His timbre, at the time of recording this work, resembled that of his teacher, René Jacobs - sort of like a Rolls Royce version René Jacobs' voice without the peculiarities, occasional "uglinesses" and "ungainlinesses" of that voice. Scholl's voice is probably a perfect countertenor voice - rich, distinctive, powerful and expressive. Andreas Scholl's experience in singing 17th and 18th century sacred music is far greater than any of his peers, save, perhaps, Michael Chance or Robin Blaze.

This entire disc is exceptionally good. The cantata shows how Herr Scholl can negotiate with ease the most florid music with ease and style.

I had the great pleasure of seeing and hearing Andreas Scholl sing the Stabat Mater and other works of Vivaldi in the Adelaide Town Hall several years ago. It was a marvellous experience and I can report that Herr Scholl has a big voice and very powerful ability to mesmerise an audience through his deep, expressive and intelligent interpretations of the music he sings. Only James Bowman's singing of the same music in the same venue in 1975 was as potent and moving for me in my memories.

The sequence of Italian baroque masterpieces using the Stabat Mater text is one of the cordilleras of musical accomplishment. The poem, perhaps written by the Medieval Italian mystic, Jacopone da Todi, was set often in the Renaissance - by Josquin, Palestrina, Browne, inter alia - but its plangent emotionalism seems to have made it especially compelling to the greatest Catholic composers of the 18th Century: Vivaldi, Alessandro Scarlatti, Domenico Scarlatti, Pergolesi, Caldara, Bononcini, and Boccherini. Each of their settings is distinctive musically, and each is a high peak in the cordillera.

Vivaldi's setting of 1712 is the earliest of his vocal compositions with a verifiable date. The text describes the sorrows of the Mother of Jesus standing at the foot of the Cross. It's worth reading through the whole poem before or while listening to a performance, any performance. Even a stern non-believer will be moved by the devotional pathos of it, and if you can read Latin, you'll find that it is a marvel of evocative verse. Vivaldi composed it almost certainly to be sung by a male alto, and not necessarily a castrato since 'falsettists' were more commonly employed as altos.

This performance by Andreas Scholl and Ensemble 415 is my current favorite of many excellent performances. It seems to me to have the best overall balance of lovely and expressive singing, elegant instrumental passagework, and tight ensemble. The performance by Michael Chance is sung superbly, but the instrumental support from Trevor Pinnock's English Consort isn't as tight. The performance by David Daniels has the opposite weakness; the instrumental contributions of Fabio Biondi's Europa Galante are sublime, probably the best on any CD, but Daniels has "holes in his game" on this recording. Philippe Jaroussky, probably my favorite male soprano these days, seems not quite suited to this particular piece, though his performance with Ensemble Matheus is certainly of interest. Kevin Mellon sings the role fairly well on a bargain recording from Aradia Ensemble.

That makes five male altos, all of them offering excellent accounts of the piece. There are also two recordings worth hearing by women altos: Sara Mingardo with Concerto Italiano, and Catherine Robbin with Les Violins du Roy. I esteem Mingardo and Alessandrini's Concerto Italian quite highly, but on this music, for my ears, the woman's more 'operatic' voice just doesn't quite serve.

There's one more male contralto performance that merits mention. The original CD is not available, but the recording is #36 of the 40 CDs in the Vivaldi Masterworks box. The performance is by Sytse Buwalda, with the Netherlands Bach Collegium. It's a strong performance by Buwalda, whose lower range suits the Stabat Mater perfectly.

I'm planning to work through the other Stabat Maters mentioned above in later reviews. Stay tuned!

This relatively short CD (52 minutes) actually has five different works, four short pieces before we get the title Mass of 9 movements. The music is simply divine, and remarkably modern sounding, although to my ear this is probably because it bears a strong resemblence to the opening of Procol Harum's song 'A Salty Dog'. This is not surprising, because PH songwriters Brooker and Reid were often known to crib some tunes from the classics. A thoroughly enjoyable disc all the way around.

Another beautiful recording by Ensemble 415 for the Harmonia Mundi label. This group is known for playing Baroque music on period instruments: their name comes from the fact that the instruments they play on the recording are tuned so that "A" is at 415 Hz as opposed to the modern tuning where "A" is at 440 Hz. Both the instrumental and choral pieces on this album are moving and evocative. Recommended.