Vecchi: Requiem: Rubens's funeral and the Antwerp Baroque
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ORAZIO VECCHI
Vecchi: Requiem: Rubens's funeral and the Antwerp Baroque
Graindelavoix, Björn Schmelzer
[ Glossa / CD ]
Release Date: Saturday 10 March 2018
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For his latest Glossa CD with Graindelavoix, Björn Schmelzer takes his lead from the funeral rites for the Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens in 1640, which might well have encompassed the Requiem Mass by Orazio Vecchi as recorded here, to demonstrate two interconnected facets of Baroque Antwerp. The city was a major centre for music printing and Vecchi's Requiem was brought out there, as were the other works presented on this disc: George de La Hèle, Duarte Lobo and Pedro Ruimonte (the recording ends with three successive Agnus Deis!). The other facet is that of the image of Rubens's art: full of energy, seductive, optimistic and scintillating. The Northern Baroque par excellence. Included in his recording are an intriguing booklet essay (about the "Baroque in disguise") and a stylised selection of pictorial images. Schmelzer encourages the listener/reader to enter into this strange world of artistic clashes and ruptures; not least the fact that Vecchi, a composer better known for his secular music popular in Venice, would have had his sacred music performed in Antwerp. This is achieved with Graindelavoix's customary uncompromising - often provocative - vocal sound, complete with artfully-executed ornamentation.
"If you're familiar with sacred vocal polyphony sung by pure-voiced English groups, these rasping and gravelly vocal timbres could hardly be further removed…It's an interesting and ultimately quite mesmerising experiment - the aural equivalent to Rubens's swirling movement and dramatic sfumato." BBC Music
"both music and singing are compelling. What director Björn Schmelzer calls the "Antwerp baroque" is intense, darkly charged late polyphony performed with a swirling, woozy style using free ornamentation and not totally precise ensemble. The result is a million miles from chaste English choralism." The Observer
"the sound in itself is very seductive, especially with the full ensemble … no one could accuse Graindelavoix of leaving you indifferent" The Gramophone
