The musicalization of space
Vocal and instrumental music by Gabrieli and Schütz fills the monastery church in Muri.
Two masters of vocal composition take center stage: Heinrich Schütz, the influential German baroque composer, meets his former teacher, the experimental Italian Giovanni Gabrieli. Gabrieli's wordless canzoni sound wonderfully solemn, while the instrumentally accompanied vocal pieces from Schütz's pen have a more solemn tone: The highest polyphonic art with a pleasing variety. However, the merits of this interpretatively outstanding CD do not end there.
Highly unusual recording technology provides additional listening pleasure. It may well be that the direct recording in front of the galleries makes finely tuned, analytical listening more difficult; perhaps some listeners are also disturbed by the lack of balance between vocal and instrumental parts in Schütz or the reverberation of the monastery church in Muri. However, the sound engineers Ludger Böckenhoff and Bernhard Hanke, the conductor Johannes Strobl, the Cappella Murensis and Les Cornets Noirs have achieved something that is sorely lacking in countless dry, sterile studio productions: a grandiose, vital and full-bodied retrospective of times that made the musicalization of space a defining theme long before the avant-garde of the 20th century.
The recording was honored with the International Classical Music Award 2013 in the Baroque vocal category.
Polychoral Splendour. Cappella Murensis, Les Cornets Noirs, conductor: Johannes Strobl. SACD Audite 92.652
