The second recording from the Orchestra of the Renaissance, this time on Virgin Veritas, presents a reconstruction of Vespers for All Souls’ Day as it might have been heard in Cordoba Cathedral around 1570. Very little is known about the musical life of this institution and it is much to the credit of Richard Cheetham, director of the group, and the adventurous support of Virgin Classics that such a recording has been realized. It certainly helps to shed light on some less well-known works by Spanish and Flemish composers of the second half of the sixteenth century and on the participation of wind and other instruments in the performance of sacred polyphony at this time. The disc opens and closes with two versions of the same piece – Gombert’s Je prens congie – as an instrumental processional/recessional; the shawms and sackbuts are lovingly and beautifully played, framing the whole in an appropriately mournful, reflective manner – although I’m not convinced by the drum rolls. Elsewhere the wind band accompanies the voices in the rendition of polyphonic psalms by such composers as Gombert, Josquin and Ceballos – the only composer on the disc known to have worked at Cordoba Cathedral – and the overall sonority is rich and persuasive, although the extent to which such instruments actually doubled voices rather than substituting them (as indeed they do in, for example, the setting by Juan Gines Perez of Psalm 137) has yet to be ascertained. The winds also accompany the chant.
Clearly, a good deal of research has gone into the programming of this recording, but it is worn lightly: a more detailed account of the reconstruction in the booklet-notes would have been welcome. The dulcian also features strongly – the bajon being an integral part of polyphonic performance in Spanish cathedrals from about this time on – as does the harp, which (presumably miked up) here makes an important contribution to the overall sound, especially in the largely homophonic items from Juan Vasquez’s Agenda defunctorum (1556). The use of the harp in the processional and the addition of bass lute in some items is perhaps more debatable. Nevertheless, the playing throughout the disc is excellent; the singing, by a small consort of seven voices, and thus mostly one to a part, likewise, though there are occasional problems with the intonation in the countertenor line.
As with their first CD (Almaviva, 9/96), the Orchestra of the Renaissance explore new possibilities for the interpretation of sacred polyphony in the Iberian peninsula towards 1600: the results are generally convincing, even if there remains much to be considered as regards performance practice, and I particularly liked the overall mournfulness of this recording.'