Requiem In

The Battalia à 10 is played with great style and charm here. I like the use of two theorbos and a harpsichord and organ on the continuo lines. I have several recordings of this work. Savall's approach is a little more polite than Goebel's and a little more atmospheric than Philip Pickett's quite raw sound. I like all of them. Savall's is, perhaps, the most beautiful recording, even though it doesn't take advantage of the musical effects Biber suggests with as much relish as Goebel or Pickett.

The A Major Requiem à 15 in Concerto is a favourite of mine and the only other recording I've ever heard is Ton Koopman's with his Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir on ERATO. I've loved Koopman's recording ever since I bought it, shortly after it was released in the 1990s. It was coupled with the magnificent Vesperæ à 32 voci. I was eager to hear another recording of this little known work. Only two requiems by Biber have survived, this one, in A major and the F minor Requiem. Both are masterpieces and each takes a different approach. The A Major work features trumpets, trombones, timpani, oboes (perhaps added later?), dulcian [fagotto], strings and, of course, basso continuo. The F minor work uses strings, two dulcians, three trombones, and multiple organs and is a much more sombre and darker work.

Savall's recording was made in Salzburg Cathedral and takes advantage of four of the organs in there. The sound is beautiful and splendid and, indeed, moving. We are transported to a beautiful world without pain - a glimpse of Heaven, in fact. The opening Marcia Funebre gives one the opportunity to wind and brass of Le Concert des Nations in the Salsburg Cathedral space. What a sound! It is worth buying the disc for the March alone. The Requiem in Concerto which follows is a beautiful and radiant work - full of hope for the afterlife and great grace and beauty.

I hope Jordi Savall and his ensembles, La Capella Reial de Catalunya and Le Concert des Nations, get around to recording the deep, dark and sober Requiem in F minor some time soon.

This current disc is highly recommended by me.

This program, a "celebration" of the 300th anniversary of the death of 17th century German composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644 - 1704), contains two Biber works and a number of smaller pieces from contemporaries such as Schmeltzer and di Lasso. "In the midst of life, we are in death" is the basis for this program, intended to illustrate the early modern pre-occupation with life and death in the wake of the Thirty Years War.

The listener is invitation to compare and contrast Biber's Mass in B and Requiem in F minor. The Mass, we are advised, was likely written for a smaller village church, while the Requiem appears to have been designed for performance in Salzburg Cathedral.

Of the two, the Requiem is a much more compelling and involving work. The harmonies, varied and rich, along with the instrumentation, I simply found to be of much higher order and complexity.

More people should set aside an hour to hear this timeless and ageless 17th century music - written long before the harried, stressful pace of our 21st century "McWorld" - and allow themselves the luxury of a trip backwards in time to a world lit only by fire. I also wouldn't hesitate to buy this disc if you are looking for great examples of early modern German liturgical music performed by perhaps the best "historically informed" ensemble currently in the business. Overall, the disc must be considered another "win" for musical historian Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort. Recorded at the Tonbridge School Chapel in Kent and making use of an organ modeled after a 17th century Italian chamber organ from Lucca, sound quality is very good, with vocal clarity and a realistic bass result.

The Battalia is pure entertainment, a series of musical vignettes and jokes based on a traditional of battle-sounds in music stretching across the Renaissance from Jannequin to Gabrieli into the late Baroque. There must be at least two dozen Battalias in the repertoire, but Biber took it farther and made it more elegant than anyone. Jordi Savall's performance of it stresses the stylized elegance and makes it a joy to hear again, like seeing a old friend in new clothes.

The Requiem is naturally a much deeper piece of music. This is a requiem of pomp and circumstance, a graduation as it were into celebrity death. I prefer Savall's interpretation of this particular Biber masterwork to any other I've heard, for its full-bodied version of the spirit. Recorded in the acoustically bizarre Salzburg Cathedral, it offers challenges to the world of digital acoustics, but the engineers have come closer to making the voices sound human than some of the other recent productions of huge-scale Biber compositions. Personally I find this and other such grandiose choral music easier to hear on good headphones than on the best stereo speakers.

If you are just meeting Jordi Savall for the first time, you should know that he is the world's foremost virtuoso on the viola da gamba. His recordings of French and Spanish chamber music for gamba and continuo, and for gambas in duet, are superb, and perhaps will entice more frequent listening than such super-human music as Biber's requiems and celebratory masses. Chacun a son gout or something like that.