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Perez choral works/Victoria Musicae

David Vernier

Artistic Quality:

Sound Quality:

For a variety of reasons–some purely musical, others related to circumstances of history–many perfectly fine composers of the Renaissance period have remained in virtual obscurity. One such is 16th-century Spanish composer Ginés Pérez, who achieved a certain stature in his home territory of Valencia but, as the liner notes point out, due to local inadequacies of music printing and the fact that he didn’t travel beyond the region, his music was not widely disseminated. As this recording shows–these works have never before been recorded–Pérez was a highly competent master of contemporary liturgical form and style, setting texts such as the Salve Regina in easily flowing lines and sonorous harmonies. In the music for the Office for the Dead, the major “work” on this program, Pérez employs varieties of vocal and instrumental combinations and builds his vocal textures with liberal use of homophonic structures. What’s most striking is the solidity, the seeming inevitability of the harmonic progressions and the skilled voicing that imbues these works with bright, richly resonant sound. Psalm 120 and the Parce mihi, Domine in the Office of the Dead are excellent examples of this, but other instances abound, not least of which occur in the several purely instrumental sections (performed on shawm, sackbut, flute, cornett, organ). In its straightforward simplicity Pérez’s Magnificat is as powerful and moving a setting as many I can think of that bear far more famous authorship. The choir, part of the Spanish early-music group Victoria Musicae, has a refined ensemble technique and its well-balanced sound is captured in a slightly too bright, resonant acoustic that lets voices and instruments ring. These singers and their excellent instrumental partners are effective advocates and make a strong case for more attention to this unknown composer’s work. All is not perfect: both singing and playing at times suffer from sagging intonation, and phrase endings aren’t always ideally, uniformly shaped. But these are small lapses in otherwise strongly recommendable performances.


Recording Details:

GINÉS PÉREZ - Salve Regina; Officium defunctorum (Office of the Dead); other works

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