- Audio CD (Oct 17 1995)
- Number of Discs: 1
- Format: Import
- Label: Polygram Records
- ASIN: B0000057EW
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Product Details |
Track Listings
| 1. 'Hail, bright Cecilia!' Z.328: Sym: Introduction: Canzona-Adagio-Canzona-Adagio-Allegro-Grave... - Gabrieli Players/McCreesh |
| 2. 'Hail, bright Cecilia!' Z.328: 'Hail, bright Cecilia!' - Jones/Wilson/Brocq/Harvey |
| 3. 'Hail, bright Cecilia!' Z.328: 'Hark, hark, each tree its silence breaks' - Wilson/Pott |
| 4. 'Hail, bright Cecilia!' Z.328: 'Tis Nature's voice' - Charles Daniels |
| 5. 'Hail, bright Cecilia!' Z.328: 'Soul of the world' - Gabrieli Consort |
| 6. 'Hail, bright Cecilia!' Z.328: 'Thou tun'st this world below, the spheres above' - Susan Hemington Jones |
| 7. 'Hail, bright Cecilia!' Z.328: 'With that sublime celestial lay' - Wilson/Brocq/Purves |
| 8. 'Hail, bright Cecilia!' Z.328: 'Wondrous machine!' - Peter Harvey |
| 9. 'Hail, bright Cecilia!' Z.328: 'The airy violin' - Julian Podger |
| 10. 'Hail, bright Cecilia!' Z.328: 'In vain the am'rous flute and soft guitar' - Daniels/Brocq |
| 11. 'Hail, bright Cecilia!' Z.328: 'The fife, and all the harmony of war' - Charles Daniels |
| 12. 'Hail, bright Cecilia!' Z.328: 'Let these amongst themselves contest' - Harvey/Purves |
| 13. 'Hail, bright Cecilia!' Z.328: 'Hail, bright Cecilia, hail to thee!' - Wilson/Podger/Daniels/Harvey |
| 14. 'My beloved spake' Z.28: Verse anthem - Podger/Daniels/Pott/Harvey |
| 15. 'O sing unto the Lord' Z.44: Verse anthem - Jones/Podger/Daniels/Harvey/Purves |
Product Description
From Amazon.com
Purcell wrote several odes in honor of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music, for annual concerts in London on St. Cecilia's Day. Hail, Bright Cecilia is the largest of them, with chorus, orchestra, and a larger-than-usual group of soloists depicting a competition between various musical instruments for supremacy. (Naturally, the organ, which legend held Cecilia to have invented, wins.) Paul McCreesh's performance here and Philippe Herreweghe's account on Harmonia Mundi are equally fine: Herreweghe is mellower and a touch more elegant, while McCreesh has a thrilling energy. --Matthew Westphal
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not easy to understand, but worth the effort,
By
This review is from: Hail Bright Cecilia (Audio CD)
As well as the St Cecilia ode this disc contains two superb biblical 'verse anthems', the second ending with a lovely and most unusual quiet Alleluia. The disc is thus excellent value in terms of the amount of music provided, the performances have authority and scholarship stamped all over them, the performers are totally accomplished professionals in music of this period and the recorded sound is very good in a discreet way. The piece I am having difficulty with is the Ode itself, or at least its opening number. I was not expecting Handelian extroversion from Purcell, but what is the connexion between minor-key harmonies and a solemn bass solo on the one hand and on the other the sentiment 'Hail bright Cecilia, fill ev'ry heart/With love of thee...' etc? Purely as music it is fine stuff, but it would not have come amiss as a setting of, say, Quid sum miser in a requiem mass. This may be a simple failure of comprehension on my part, and I betook myself to the liner notes for guidance. To my frustration these read like rather amateur advertising copy telling us what to admire (everything, basically) and how to admire it. A certain amount of e.g. 'McCreesh's unforced command of the Ode's wide expressive range' or 'it conveys an arresting grandeur' or 'McCreesh...eschews detached historicism...and brings a fresh and vital approach' is fair enough, and I have to admit that my spirits were lifted when 'the tessitura becomes stratospherically high' and Mr J Freeman-Attwood soars in sympathy into the empyrean with 'Daniels caresses each new graphic image with a magical sense of of gradually unfolding the music's captivating charms'. For this disclosure I am grateful indeed though probably not in the way the author intended, but it's a wasted opportunity when this is all there is.The text of this St Cecilia ode is by one Nicholas Brady, reasonable workaday stuff but obviously not in the Dryden class. The liner notes do not go into the obscure association of St Cecilia, an early martyr, with the art of music -- legend has her as the inventor of the organ, which she had no more chance of inventing than the saxophone. This is a topic I shall go into when I have got my ideas clearer on the Ode. My unreserved recommendation of this disc does not have to wait for that.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review) 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not easy to understand, but worth the effort,
By DAVID BRYSON - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Hail Bright Cecilia (Audio CD)
As well as the St Cecilia ode this disc contains two superb biblical 'verse anthems', the second ending with a lovely and most unusual quiet Alleluia. The disc is thus excellent value in terms of the amount of music provided, the performances have authority and scholarship stamped all over them, the performers are totally accomplished professionals in music of this period and the recorded sound is very good in a discreet way. The piece I am having difficulty with is the Ode itself, or at least its opening number. I was not expecting Handelian extroversion from Purcell, but what is the connexion between minor-key harmonies and a solemn bass solo on the one hand and on the other the sentiment 'Hail bright Cecilia, fill ev'ry heart/With love of thee...' etc? Purely as music it is fine stuff, but it would not have come amiss as a setting of, say, Quid sum miser in a requiem mass. This may be a simple failure of comprehension on my part, and I betook myself to the liner notes for guidance. To my frustration these read like rather amateur advertising copy telling us what to admire (everything, basically) and how to admire it. A certain amount of e.g. 'McCreesh's unforced command of the Ode's wide expressive range' or 'it conveys an arresting grandeur' or 'McCreesh...eschews detached historicism...and brings a fresh and vital approach' is fair enough, and I have to admit that my spirits were lifted when 'the tessitura becomes stratospherically high' and Mr J Freeman-Attwood soars in sympathy into the empyrean with 'Daniels caresses each new graphic image with a magical sense of of gradually unfolding the music's captivating charms'. For this disclosure I am grateful indeed though probably not in the way the author intended, but it's a wasted opportunity when this is all there is.The text of this St Cecilia ode is by one Nicholas Brady, reasonable workaday stuff but obviously not in the Dryden class. The liner notes do not go into the obscure association of St Cecilia, an early martyr, with the art of music -- legend has her as the inventor of the organ, which she had no more chance of inventing than the saxophone. This is a topic I shall go into when I have got my ideas clearer on the Ode. My unreserved recommendation of this disc does not have to wait for that. |
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