Monday, 9 March 2020

de la Rue - Missa Puer natus est nobis etc. - Ars Antiqua de Paris


Rating: 2/5

Review:
A poor recording

I’m afraid I don’t like this recording at all. Pierre de la Rue was a wonderful composer and there are some excellent recordings of his work; this isn’t one of them.

To put it bluntly, the singers aren’t very good, and nor is the direction. There is almost nothing in the way of blend or, more importantly, balance so the impression is of a group of people doing their own thing with little reference to anyone else – which entirely negates much of the point of polyphony. The singers themselves sound tentative to the point of being scared much of the time, intonation is occasionally dodgy, there is some intrusive vibrato...it just sounds pretty grim to me.

I don’t like to be so critical, but I really think this is a poor recording which does no justice to de la Rue’s music. My advice is to try some of the fine recordings by The Clerk’s Group, Henry’s Eight, Amarcord, Gothic Voices and others and to leave this one well alone.

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