Search - Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Gregorian Chant, Wilfried Rombach :: Palestrina: Le Vergini

One of the outstanding Palestrina recordings available

Sator | Sydney, Australia | 07/29/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Ensemble Officium are based around Tübingen and Heidelberg in South West Germany. They were founded by Wilfried Rombach in 1999 and won the Guido D'Arezzo award that year. They have since gone on to record a series of superb CDs of Renaissance polyphony including two recordings devoted to Palestrina. The characteristic way they balance precision with beautiful phrasing always make them a pleasure to listen to and this recording of music by Palestrina is no exception.



This recording of the highly attractive Le Vergini by Palestrina may be about the only known one in existence. I certainly cannot track down any evidence of a previous recording anywhere. The work consists of Palestrina's setting of texts by Petrarch which were called 'canzoni spirituali' by Palestrina but his use of madrigalian techniques and forms betray the fact that they are in fact spiritual madrigals.



The other work presented here is the Missa Ave Regina Caelorum. The work is a later composition reflecting the influences of the Council of Trent with a reduction in the complexity of part writing to three parts - but even then he cannot resist throwing in a florid display of expanded part writing in five voices by writing a two-part Canon in Diapente in the tenor part in the concluding third Agnus Dei.



As always with Palestrina the writing is highly refined with every note calculated to perfection and never endulging in open displays of emotion.



David Vernier writing on Classicstoday really summed things up well in his 10/9 rating of this recording (10 for the performance and 9 for the recording):



"Although the Tallis Scholars remain the world's premier Palestrina performers, if forced to make such comparisons I'd without reservation say that Ensemble Officium is very close behind. I look forward to hearing more--much more--from this excellent group."



I in fact prefer their Missa Papae Marcelli to that of the Tallis Scholar while agreeing that this is one of the outstanding Palestrina recordings available today.



David Vernier found the recording acoustic to be slightly too resonant to allow all the fullest detail to emerge, but on my system I enjoy this more atmospheric recording that still allows full detail to emerge naturally. Many of the Gimell recordings can seem a touch too analytical - typical of their pursuit of clarity at all cost. So the excellent capture of the natural ambience of a church acoustic here is something that the Christophorus recording engineers here must be congratulated on.



The Ensemble Officium are an outstanding group and I hope more music lovers will go on to discover them for they deserve to be far better known than they currently are."