Search - Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Wilfried Rombach, Ensemble Officium :: Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli

One of the finest Palestrina exponents today

Sator | Sydney, Australia | 08/02/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Missa Papae Marcelli is Palestrina's best known work and the most frequently recorded. According to legend this work helped to save polyphonic music from an attempt by the puritanical Council of Trent, from banning polyphony on the grounds that it detracted from the religious understanding of the text. It was probably also a Counter Reformation reaction to Luther's dimissal of plain chant as just a lot of 'braying'. Luther openly expressed his preferrence for polyphony, especially that of Josquin's.



Ensemble Officium hails from 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 number of excellent CDs of Renaissance polyphony including two recordings devoted to Palestrina. The way the group balance precision and refinement with beautifully expressive phrasing is always a genuine pleasure to listen to.



There have been a number of exceptional recordings of the Missa Papae Marcelli, although my benchmark has always been the recording by Pro Cantione Antiqua - a recording that has become rather difficult to track down these days. I am glad to say that the recording by the Ensemble Officium lives up to their rapidly growing reputation as one of the rising stars of the early music world. The way they phrase Palestrina's long melismatic lines makes this one of the finest recordings of this work I have heard. In fact I readily prefer this to even to the Tallis Scholars. Tempi are more flowing than those with Pro Cantione Antiqua but this is used as a springboard to a more genuinely cantabile phrasing resulting in a quite different but entirely ligitimate interpretation that still manages to capture the refined stillness of Palestrina's writing.



Other works recorded on this well filled disc include several motets by Palestrina such as Beati Omnes and Viri Galilaei. Other reviewers elsewhere have commented on even the excellence of their Gregorian Chant and the same holds true for this recording as with all their others.



Further adding to the pleasure of listening to this recording is the excellence of the recorded sound which has a well nigh perfect balance between being clarity and atmosphere.



This is a choir who can hold their own in comparison to any English choir you care to name. And their interpretation of Palestrina great masterpiece demands to be heard. Expect more great things from them!"