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Music : Giovanni Gabrieli: Music For San RoccoIn association with Amazon.comRating:  - Uneven in effect but tremendous performances noenthelessIn contrast with the previous reviewer, I find this group to be at their absolute best when presenting a reconstructed service. When a selection of "pure music" such as this CD is presented, I find myself getting bored with the evenness of sound. The acoustic of the Scuola di San Rocco is much drier than that of a church - wooden flooring and all - and I find that the very large scale pieces (such as the closing Magnificat) lose much of their magnificence performed in this acoustic. I don't mean to say that it is not magnificent, only that it could be so much more so. The smaller, chamber-style pieces on the other hand sound superb here. All the performances are flawless and very sensitive, no matter what scale they are on. This is very much in the same league as the tremendous Venetian Coronaton CD by the same group, but because of the acoustic - or maybe the sound engineering itself - I am left feeling less viscerally involved by the close of the CD than in I should be - hence 4/5. Rating:  - The BEST Gabrieli Album, and McCreesh's Best, Too"Music for San Rocco" gives us a most generous collection of Gabrieli music(78 min.), beautifully performed and gorgeously recorded. The album as a whole is well paced, alternating the grand, the meditative and the purely instumental with intelligence and sensitivity. And the singing is always enthusiastic and downright rapturous! For me, this is also McCreesh's best album because it is not a reconstruction. I have heard several of these discs, and the reconstructions of Mass or vesper services might be interesting to listen to once, or maybe even twice if you have never been ot a genuine Catholic service of this sort. But frankly, liturgies, and liturgical chants are not entertainment, and generally are purely functional rather than entertaining. If you want just the real music on these discs, you have to program out 20-25% of the selections! More music and less turgid liturgical history for me, Paul! Rating: - Excellent!I'm not much of an early music buff, but being acquainted with one of the soloists on the disc, I decided to spring for it. Am I glad I did! This is one absolutely stunning album. The incomparable David Hurley himself makes this disc a must for your collection. |
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