Tomas Luis de Victoria: Missa & Motette "O magnum mysterium" auf CD

Product-Information:

Tomás Luis de Victoria was born in 1548 in Avila, birthplace of St Teresa. Just as she seems to personify the religious ethos of sixteenth-century Spain (the good side of it, at least), so Victoria came to embody the best of the Spanish character in music. As a youth he learnt his art as a chorister at the Cathedral of Avila. So promising was he that he was sent to Rome at seventeen years of age, patronized by Philip II and by the Church, to study at the Jesuit’s Collegium Germanicum.

Victoria’s musical career in Rome brought him into contact with Palestrina and the innumerable singers, organists and composers from all over Europe who were active in the chapels and churches of that great city at the very time when Catholicism regained confidence, new vitality and disciplined reform. The young Spanish priest was soon publishing his compositions in sumptuous editions (even Palestrina was jealous).

The success of his Roman years did not prevent Victoria from yearning for a quiet life in Spain. After his publications of 1585 (including the famous set of Holy Week music) he achieved his desire and returned to take up the position of Chaplain and Chapelmaster at the Royal Convent of the Barefoot Nuns of St Clare in Madrid, effectively the home and chapel of Philip II’s sister, the Dowager Empress Maria. There he ended his days producing less and less after 1600 and nothing, so far as we know, after the publication in 1605 of the great Office of the Dead, the Requiem for the Empress who died in 1603. Victoria died in 1611. He had turned down offers from Seville and Saragossa; he had visited Rome during the period 1592–94, supervising the printing of his works and attending Palestrina’s funeral. In 1595 he returned to Madrid and stayed.....

Rezensionen

'Magnificent!' (Hi Fi News)

'Superb music, and the listener is thrillingly involved when the sound so successfully combines immediacy and body, yet remains admirably coloured by the Westminster resonance' (The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs)

'David Hill and the Choir of Westminster Cathedral have repeated the spectacular success of their earlier Gramophone Award-winning record' (Gramophone)

Rezensionen

D.​Fallows in Gramophone 6/86:"Besonders im Gloria und im Credo kann man die Komposi- tionsideale Klarheit und Einfachheit bewundern.​ Der Gesang ist durchweg energisch und gut kontrolliert, die Interpreten vermitteln eine Bindung zu dieser Art von Musik und zur litur- gischen Botschaft.​ Die Aufnahmetechnik zeich- net sich durch Detailreichtum und Natürlichkeit aus.​"