[ Alpha Classics / CD ]
Release Date: Friday 11 October 2019
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Here are the Monteverdi Vespers as you've never heard them before! 'I see these Vespers as a great incantatory ritual that connects the sacred with the pagan, the intimate with the collective. I experienced this powerful sensation many times in my childhood, in the choir of an abbey: the intense, warm light of a late summer day, filtering in from the west and reflected all the way up to the choir', says Simon-Pierre Bestion. The founder of La Tempête has made very personal choices for this recording, notably concerning the composition of the orchestra, which he has enriched with instruments from different cultures, including the serpent and the chitarrone. He has added 'fauxbourdons', simple improvised chants deriving from folk tradition. The colours of the voices in these Vespers are also very unusual: Bestion follows in the tradition of oral polyphony as it still exists in Corsica, Sardinia and Georgia.
"It's certainly not the marble-fronted, coolly classical city so many accounts of this work would suggest. La Tempête's Venice is all cosmopolitan collisions, the crossroads of Europe - busy, dirty, bustling with as many prostitutes as priests...The style of performance is as irreverent and wide-ranging as the musical material...Judged against its own quirky standards, Bestion's account makes its case." Gramophone
"The sounds are strange yet beguiling, and wonderfully delivered by Bestion's solo consort singers, who ravish the ear in Pulchra es and Duo Seraphim, and pull out all the stops in the big ensemble pieces." Sunday Times
"Crucially, Simon-Pierre Bestion makes no claims whatsoever to authenticity with this realisation of the Vespers. How could he? It's a completely personal vision; it convinces by dint of his visionary extension of a heavenly work to an even more heavenly length. And by infusing a combination of popular, local flavours which certainly liberate it from cathedral or concert-hall formality and restore it to the people - all the people. I suspect old Claudio is smiling in the great beyond. Ambitious? For sure. Captivating and unforgettable? Definitely. Hear it." MusicWeb Recommended July 2020
Disc 1
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Faux-bourdon Domine ad adjuvandum me
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Toccata et Domine ad adjuvandum me
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Antienne Gaudeamus omnes
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Faux-bourdon Dixit Dominus
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Dixit Dominus
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Nigra sum
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Antienne Diffusa est gratia
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Faux-bourdon Laudate pueri
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Laudate pueri
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Pulchra es
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Antienne Tota pulchra es
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Faux-bourdon Laetatus sum
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Laetatus sum
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Duo Seraphim
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Antienne Recordare Virgo Mater
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Faux-bourdon Nisi Dominus
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Nisi Dominus
CD2
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Ricercar sopra Sancta Maria (Frescobaldi)
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Audi caelum
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Antienne Felix es sacra Virgo
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Faux-bourdon Lauda Jerusalem
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Lauda Jerusalem
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Antienne Assumpta est Maria
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Sonata sopra Sancta Maria
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Ave maris stella
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Magnificat
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Magnificat 'Et exultavit'
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Magnificat 'Quia respexit'
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Magnificat 'Quia fecit'
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Magnificat 'Et misericordia'
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Magnificat 'Fecit potentiam'
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Magnificat 'Deposuit'
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Magnificat 'Esurientes'
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Magnificat 'Suscepit Israel'
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Magnificat 'Sicut locutus'
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Magnificat 'Gloria Patri'
Vespro della beata vergine, SV 206: Magnificat 'Sicut erat'