COMPOSERS: Antonius de Civitate Austrie & AnonLa Reverdie,Bartholomeus de Bononia,Dufay,Feragut,Prepositus Brixiensis
LABELS: Arcana
ALBUM TITLE: Collection: Voyage En Italie
WORKS: Works by Dufay, Feragut, Prepositus Brixiensis, Bartholomeus de Bononia, Antonius de Civitate Austrie & Anon
PERFORMER: La Reverdie
CATALOGUE NO: A 317
In the late medieval period the Great Schism in the church had an unsettling effect on musicians north of the Alps. Composers such as Guillaume Dufay and Beltrane Feragut moved southwards to secure their careers, and they encountered and absorbed music by native Italians such as Prepositus Brixiensis (in Padua), Bartholomeus de Bononia (in Bologna) and Antonius, a Dominican friar from Cividale.
This enterprising CD gives a lively account of the music resulting from those encounters. The works by Feragut and Bononia have not been recorded before, and the latter’s elegant ‘Morir desio’ is sung with great poise by Elisabetta de’Mircovich. However, here and elsewhere (such as in the ‘Amen’ of Dufay’s ‘Supremum est mortalibus’) the added percussion accompaniments are distracting and unnecessary. Several of the Dufay motets have recently been recorded by The Clerks’ Group (reviewed August 2002) and the Huelgas Ensemble (reviewed September 2000). Generally, The Clerks’ Group versions are slightly better than here, though the La Reverdie version of ‘Vasilisa ergo’ surpasses the others in clarity and fluency. The booklet is attractive, but tends to be inaccurate. Anthony Pryer