Church Without Talking

Bach: Epiphany Mass
Gabrieli Consort & Players
Deutsche Grammophon ARCHIV Produktion, 457 631-2
1998

***

Looking back on the short tenure of this music blog, I find that the previously-reviewed recording by Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort & Players, The Road to Paradise, stands out as my favorite recording of the year (at least so far). The more I listen to it, the more deeply impressed I am: profoundly conceived, flawlessly executed, stunningly captured; this disc is a rare, rare treat.

Well, the ensemble have been together for quite a while--since 1982, to be exact--and I'm the one showing up late to the party. So there's quite a catalog of recordings to explore. I've chosen next the group's 1998 recreation of the musical portions of a Mass at the St. Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where Bach was employed for the last half of his life. The intent here, it appears (there are no notes with the iTunes download), is to show Bach's purpose-made music in as close to the exact context as possible to what people would have experienced at the time. And as such, we find his composed mass included among some of his organ works, a cantata and a number of other pieces by other composers. All these disparate elements would have been skilfully integrated and managed to achieve the appropriate ecclesiastical experience (as it was judged at the time).

I am, I've often said, a stickler for precision and intonation, attributes present to the point of conspicuity in their Road to Paradise CD. Not surprisingly, the current disc proves that Dr. McCreesh and company did not suddenly stumble upon their skills just prior to that most recent recording. This one reminds me of the axiom that our elders were pounding into our heads when we were kids: through discipline comes freedom. By choosing ensemble members carefully and holding everyone to very exacting standards, the work produced blossoms before us as something more than the sum of its parts. This particular setting places our Bach and his work among that of other composers, most notably Johann Pachelbel, which, with the chants and other service-related details, gives us a sense of his modernity and his perfection of craft. It's a glorious and elevating experience.

I'm less disposed to respond to the efforts at replicating the church service per se, doubtless because the ecclesiastical functions and origin of this music are lost on me. So in that sense, this effort as a concept album doesn't hit its mark for me. That element of Bach's music, his piety, has never played a role in my love of his work. I'm taken with his miraculous mind, his singular genius for purely musical logic. There is all the mystery of the human experience right there.

Still, I would not grudge the believer their synergy with Bach's religious message, and McCreesh et al. have given us the best possible chance to find the wonder of this music, however we define it.

The Plunge to The Depths

The Road to Paradise
Gabrieli Consort / Paul McCreesh
Deutsche Grammophon, CD 477 6605
Music of Britten · Byrd · William H. Harris · Holst · Howells · Robert Parsons · Richard Rodney Bennett · Sheppard · Tallis · John Tavener

***

I bought this back-to-back with the previously-reviewed Sixteen / Harry Christophers album, and as I listen from one to the other they almost seem at first like companion discs. Rather than concentrating specifically on virginal material, though, the unifying theme for the Gabrieli Consort CD is the trek made by medieval pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela (a subject also addressed in Joby Talbot's 2005 composition Path of Miracles). Conductor McCreesh has chosen pieces--again spanning several centuries--that express musically what religious pilgrims might have experienced during the perilous journey. Sonically, the two albums occupy some common real estate; both are fairly serious and somber and contemplative unaccompanied choral music (there is just a bit of organ on the Gabrieli Consort disc).

But that first impression of similarity does not hold up. There is a noticeable change of sonic setting moving from one disc to the other; that's one part of it. Paul McCreesh has chosen a much larger, more luxurious acoustic than that in which The Sixteen were recorded. But that acoustic plays a supporting role in what, after a couple listenings, comes across as a much more ambitious project. While we do have works of serenity and surpassing beauty such as Robert Parson's Ave Maria and Thomas Tallis's Miserere nostri, we encounter more depth and drama as we progress, in Benjamin Britten's treatment of the traditional A Hymn to The Virgin and John Tavener's Song for Athene and Gustav Holst's Nunc dimittis and others. It's all fairly buttoned-down, but the dynamics presented in this setting introduce us to deep waters.

The Gabrieli Consort was formed by Paul McCreesh in 1982 and, like The Sixteen, concentrate on mostly Baroque and Renaissance repertoire (though they are now venturing forward into the Classical). They were one of the first groups I encountered to concentrate on authentic period performance, and the value of the exercise is nowhere more evident than here. Intonation and blend are superb; no other word does the trick. Using between 8 and 32 singers on these various pieces, I cannot imagine getting more deeply into this music than these women and men have done here.

The Sixteen disc is excellent; but this offering from Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort is profound.

Highest recommendation.