There are now quite a few recordings of various parts of the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso el Sabio, including discs by some of the world’s finest early music artists, including Jordi Savall with Monserrat Figueras, Philip Pickett, and Sequentia. Ensemble Alla Francesca has now made an exemplary recording that deserves attention even in that company. With a wide range of instruments, the musicians create an authoritative atmosphere, accurately capturing the essence of the medieval Spanish court. In Como Jesucristo fezo a san Pedro, they use an interesting combination of double flute and a special cylindrical medieval flute, along with the strummed cittern. In the instrumental tune Maravillosos e piadosos, a slow, stately pavane, the pure, reedy call and drone of the cornemuse and its insistent frame drum accompaniment create a captivating aura.
The singing throughout also is top-notch. Pierre Bourhis and Emmanuel Bonnardot make an excellent duo in O ffondo do mar, with perfect intonation in the tight harmonic intervals. The exceptionally beautiful Santa Maria amar features the appropriately melancholy soprano of Brigitte Lesnes in a call and response with a quintet of women’s voices. Some listeners may quibble, in an purely academic argument, over the singers’ use of vibrato and regarding the inaccurate pronunciation of the Galician Portuguese final ‘s’. But few will argue with the sound reproduction of the fascinatingly wide array of instruments and the various voices throughout these 17 tracks–just about the best recorded sound I have heard in a disc of this repertoire. Fans of the period will surely want to have this, and it also makes a perfect introduction to one of the more important song collections of the middle ages. [2/18/2001]
