The recorded repertoire of Belgian conductor Philippe Herreweghe is centered on Bach, but stretches from the Renaissance to Mahler and Bruckner. Regardless of era, he seems to do best in sober, complex structures that he can unpack with a combination of perfect control and great surface beauty. He has rarely obtained more perfect results than with this recording of works by the towering figure of the Spanish Renaissance, Tomás Luís de Victoria. The Officium Defunctorum, described in the album annotations as a swan song, in ...
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The recorded repertoire of Belgian conductor Philippe Herreweghe is centered on Bach, but stretches from the Renaissance to Mahler and Bruckner. Regardless of era, he seems to do best in sober, complex structures that he can unpack with a combination of perfect control and great surface beauty. He has rarely obtained more perfect results than with this recording of works by the towering figure of the Spanish Renaissance, Tomás Luís de Victoria. The Officium Defunctorum, described in the album annotations as a swan song, in fact fulfilled that role both for its dedicatee, the Empress Maria of Spain (Victoria's longtime employer), and for Victoria himself, who wrote nothing else after publishing this music in 1605; he died in 1611. The Offices consist of a requiem mass (Missa pro defunctis), a pair of motets, and a Libera me separate from the mass. The collection seems disparate, but everything is knit together in Victoria's setting. Each section absorbs plainchant seamlessly into the texture, and the...
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