Rating: 4/5
Review:
Slightly unengaging performances
It is very good to have the whole of Carver's surviving
music available. He was a fine composer
who is best known for his stunning 19-part motet O Bone Jesu but who produced
some very good mass settings and other music, too. Alan Tavener and Capella Nova deserve great
credit for having recorded this 3-CD series, but I have never been wholly
convinced by their performances.
Technically, the singing is good and in the larger choral
passages the impact can be very moving in places, but especially in quieter
passages there is a slight thinness and fragmentation of sound, exacerbated by
some slight vibrato and poor balance on occasion which can prevent the
polyphony really gelling as it should. I
first bought the three-disc set in the mid-90s and, while I'm glad to have it,
I haven't played it all that often since – certainly nothing like as much as my
discs by The Tallis Scholars, The Cardinall's Musick and others.
These certainly aren't bad recordings, but there's something
which doesn't quite engage me in the music or engender a sense of spirituality
in the way I think it should. If you're interested in polyphony or early
Scottish music then you may well be glad of this series, but personally I can
only give it a rather qualified recommendation.
No comments:
Post a Comment