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Reviewer: KateBolton-Porciatti
With their latest recording, Patrick Allies and his vocal ensemble Siglo de Oro lift the veil that has shrouded the Flemish composer Hermann Matthias Werrecore - maestro di cappella of Milan Cathedral from the 1520s for nearly three decades. Werrecore has been overshadowed by his celebrated predecessor in Milan, Josquin Desprez - but unjustly so, judging from the quality of the music on this disc. Six of Werrecore's motets are recorded here, for the first time, several of them quoting and echoing Josquin by way of homage. Outstanding among them are Popule meus, a stark and monumental work for Good Friday, Proh dolor, with its acidulous harmonies and dissonances, and the radiant Ave maris stella - a feast of spiralling lines and deft canonic writing.
The 13 youthful
voices of Siglo de Oro produce a fresh, ingenuous sound. Their timbre is open
and expressive - the use of vibrato adding a tremulous urgency to some of the
more emotive passages. The young singers respond sensitively to the musical and
liturgical range of this programme: exultant in Werrecore's setting of Psalm
127, Beatiomnes (probably intended for a wedding); plangent in his
funerary motet Proh dolor, rapt in Gaffurius’s Osacrum convivium.
Textures vary, too, from the luscious full ensemble to fragile solo voices
(their sound tender, if a shade tentative at times). Director Patrick Allies
shapes the architecture of the large-scale musical edifices with admirable
control, Both the ensemble and the recording are well-balanced, and the acoustic
has an aptly sacred bloom. | ||||
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