Search - Salomone Rossi, Eric Milnes, New York Baroque :: Songs of Soloman 1

New York Baroque Performs Salamone Rossi

Anonymous | Boston, MA | 04/06/2000

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This disc, along with Volume II of the same set, is the best recording of Salmaone Rossi's sacred music on the market to date. That said, the disc is far from ideal. The choir's blend is only fair, as many of the singers are soloists and make no secret of it here. In addition, some of the pieces are interpreted quite inappropriately, such as the ensemble's four minute long, lament-like performance of Rossi's five voice Kaddish. This piece is in fact a dance-like song of praise that should be performed nearly twice as quickly and in an entirely different character!"

Fine tribute to Salamone de'Rossi, Ebreo

Anonymous | 05/13/2002

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Salamone Rossi is the best known, and very likely the best, Jewish composer of the Monteverdi era. Today he is famous for his Hebrew language collection 'Songs of Solomon' published in Venice in 1623.The best introduction to this music is probably the venerable 1979 recording 'Musique Judeo-Baroque' by Joel Cohen on HMA. The 1988 reissue included English translations but no texts. (One assumes the 2002 digipack reissue is the same). Cohen gives a lively mixture of pieces by Rossi - 4 instrumental and 4 Hebrew songs - as well as two later Hebrew dialogi by the less famous Louis Saladin and (commissioned Gentile) Carlo Grossi.Sidney Fixman's 1996 recording 'Hashirim asher li-Shlomo' for Carlton presents 20 vocal pieces by Rossi from his 1623 magnum opus. But again, only the English translations are provided.The Milnes set, originally recorded for PMG, now reissued on Dorian, divides the sabbath pieces (CD1) and the festival pieces (CD2, available separately) but the total playing time of the two disks is not a great deal longer than the generous 69'23 on the Fixman disc. The main advantage of the Milnes set is that the second disc (only!) gives a transliterated Hebrew text of what is being sung, which saves scrambling around with a Hebrew Old Testament or trying to chase up Hebrew texts of liturgical settings like the Kaddish.As a footnote, although Salamone Rossi is most famous today for the Hebrew pieces, personally I believe that he ought to be better known for his instrumental and Italian language pieces - these after all had to hold their own in a more fiercely competitive and crowded market when they were first published. Tactus has recently released two collections of his work for Venice's Gentile audience: The Italian 'Madrigaletti' performed by the peerless L'Aure Soave, and an instrumental collection 'Il terzo libro de varie sonate' performed by Il Ruggiero. There may be other pieces that have been recorded on CD and mixed up with the more famous (but obviously unrelated) Gentile Rossis, Luigi and Michelangelo.NB. A recording by Festa and the Daedalus Ensemble on the Accent label in 1998 presented a mix of instrumental, 6 Italian and 2 Hebrew pieces but got a lukewarm review from Gramophone magazine - I regret that I haven't heard it."