Search - A. Gabrieli, Hm Sagbutts & Cornetts, Roberts :: Missa Pater Peccavi / Motets & Instrumental Music

When we speak of "the Gabrielis," we mean uncle Andrea and nephew Giovanni, each of whom worked as principal organist at the Basilica of San Marco in Venice during the 16th century. (Unless, of course, we mean Paul McCreesh's Gabrieli Consort & Players, the composers' leading interpreters.) Giovanni by far is the better known composer, no doubt because his extroverted music for multiple choirs of brass instruments and/or voices so readily attracts the attention of listeners (and concert presenters and record producers, too). While Andrea Gabrieli composed also polychoral music, his style tends to be more subdued and meditative--in line with his contemporary colleagues Palestrina and Victoria--than that of his nephew. Hyperion has begun to give the older composer his due with the first widely available CD that's devoted entirely to his music. The veteran English ensemble His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts and its new companion, His Majestys Consort of Voices, perform Andrea's Missa Pater Peccavi along with several motets, instrumental pieces, and organ works. While the program is not a McCreesh-style liturgical reconstruction, the shorter works are interspersed between the movements of the Mass, with an end result that's not far from the practice at music-crazed San Marco. The Mass is performed by voices and instruments doing the six parts together, while the motets are performed with voices on one or two lines and instruments on the rest. While one misses the reverent fervor that McCreesh and his musicians bring to this music, these performers do an attractive, thoroughly professional job with this luminous music and begin to redress the familial imbalance. --Matthew Westphal