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“For my disc of the year I turn to an enchanting collection of rare Spanish sacred choral music exquisitely performed by Coro Cervantes under Carlos Fernández Aransay, the title of the disc being drawn from a lovely song by Fernando Sor, O Crux.”
Gramophone Magazine Yearly Round-Up
“The cover of O Crux suggests a programme of Spanish choral music from the age of Victoria. But no, it!s actually a series of world première recordings of mostly a cappella sacred music written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Albéniz, Granados, Manuel de Falla and Fernando Sor as we have never heard them before: caught up in the mystery of religion and drawing imaginatively, and often very audibly, on the styles of their illustrious ancestors. Coro Cervantes richly convey the intensity and excitement of the Discovery.”
International Record Review
“Political upheavals in Spain during the 19th century have been over-shadowed by those of the 20th century, yet as carlos Fernandez Aransay pints out in his fascinating note, for virtually the entire 19th century political manoeuvrings had an absolutely catastrophic effect on Spanish sacred music. With male religious orders and boys’ choirs abolished, music chapels all but abandoned and only ordained priests allowed to perform music inn church,it seems astonishing that Aransay has managed to fill a single disc. Polished and beautifully precise as their singing is, there is no escaping the fact that Coro Cervantes is a British choir, nor that the smooth-toned organ and warm and comfortable acoustic, so admirably captured in this lovely recording, belong to an Oxford College (Exeter) rather than a Spanish cathedral. But for all their Anglican overtones, these singers, under the clearly-focused direction of the utterly Spanish Carlos Fernández Aransay, reveal this to be music of far more than mere curiosity value; this is a disc to enjoy on many levels.”
Gramphone Magazine
“If most British listeners have an image at all of Spanish choral music, it will be of Renaissance masters such as Victoria and Lobo, who brought a special fervour to the seamless 16th-century contrapuntal style. So neglected is 19th-century Spanish choral music that the majority of recordings on this disc, recently selected by Gramophone as a Critics Choice CD of the year, are world premières. The Coro Cervantes - Britain's only professional group devoted to Hispanic classical repertoire - and their director Carlos Fernández Aransay are clearly on a mission of discovery and recovery. Their zeal shines forth in these performances, whose passion is balanced by finely-nuanced direction and precise ensemble. The excitement of discovery is especially palpable in the first four tracks of the disc, which in their awestruck polyphony capture something of the spirit and technique of the Renaissance greats, from the numinous opening of Albéniz's a capella psalm setting to Vicente Goioechea's impassioned Christus Factus est, via some splendid organ fanfares in Granados' Salve Regina and a perfect minute-long sliver of a motet by Falla. The appearance of great names such as Albéniz, Granados, Falla and Sor in the unfamiliar guise of sacred choral music is one of the best surprises of the collection.”
BBC Radio 3 Record Review
“Followers of London's professional Spanish-repertoire choir will be pleased that its debut CD (released two years ago) has a successor. So will others who go exploring this attractive collection of short, mostly unaccompanied works -often serene, sometimes dramatic- by Catalans, Basques, Spaniards and the Argentinean Alberto Ginastera. Ginastera's Lamentations of Jeremiah, the first and longest item, is also the most exciting and is brilliantly performed. Highlights include Pau Casals at his most fervently eloquent, Ernesto Halffter's quirky, striking Oratio, an a freshly harmonised Agnus Dei by Javier Busto which culminates in a epigrammatic six-part pile- up on "Dona nobis pacem" and creates an appetite for the Missa Brevis from which it is taken.”
BBC Music Magazine
“For unusual repertoire, Coro Cervantes wins one gold medal, and for its passionate readings another. I am now burning with curiosity to know what music it will find to fill a third disc.”
International Record Review |
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