Author: Hilliard Ensemble

Format: Remixes included

Release Date: 19-12-2008

Details: Amazon.ca Since the early 1970s The Hilliard Ensemble have championed Early Music with an imaginative vision and austere purity of sound. Initially viewed with considerable suspicion by both classical and jazz fraternities, the albums Officium, and later Mnemosyne, recorded with the saxophonist and fellow ECM artist, Jan Gabarek, proved a breakthrough, vastly increasing popular interest in early sacred song. In Paradisum capitalises on this interest with an extensive grand tour of European music. The "Officium Defunctorum" of Victoria takes us to Spain, while there is Italian polyphony by Palestrina and anonymous 17th Century French Gregorian chant. This is intensely beautiful spiritual music, the four voices of the Hilliard Ensemble weaving tapestries of concentrated power and immense calm. Central to the sequence are extended settings of the "Libera me Domine", one from each named composer. Without sacrificing individual character, over 75 minutes, the performers spin the selections into something newly their own. The set is presented with the expected faultless ECM refinement and high production values. The Hilliard Ensemble can be heard in contemporary music which builds upon earlier traditions in Avo Pärt's Litany, while an acclaimed recording of Victoria's Officium Defunctorum is available from the Gabrieli Consort under Paul McCreesh. --Gary S. Dalkin

UPC: 028945785127

EAN: 0028945785127

Languages: English

Binding: Audio CD

Item Condition: UsedVeryGood