Sacred Treasures of Venice: Motets from the Golden Age of Venetian Polyphony

Charles Cole, London Oratory Schola Cantorum

Released on 2/2/24 by Hyperion
Main artists: London Oratory Schola Cantorum Charles Cole
Genre: Classical

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The London Oratory Schola Cantorum has been around for several decades but came on the recording scene definitively only in the 2010s, offering a series of "Sacred Treasures of ..." albums. These are not the generic products one might guess from the title. Consider 2024's Sacred Treasures of Venice, which is not an anthology but an album focusing on a specific repertory and on one specific part of it at that. It made classical best-seller charts in early 2024. St. Mark's cathedral in Venice at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th is known for polychoral magnificence, for sacred music in which instruments played a new and groundbreaking role. Of course, more intimate music was also pursued, and even in larger pieces practice, was flexible, and they might have been sung a cappella. These pieces by Giovanni Gabrieli, his uncle Andrea Gabrieli, the young Claudio Monteverdi, and a couple of other composers are ideally suited to the all-male London Oratory Schola Cantorum, whose boy singers have some texture and heft. However, it is interesting as well to hear the St. Mark's repertory sung this way; one hears that the big dimensions of the music were not just a response to St. Mark's architecture but represented a musical evolution as well. Giovanni Gabrieli was innovative not just in using instruments but in shaping musical architectures with register and harmony, and this is apparent even where no instruments are present. The contrasts among the composers here are also intriguing; hear the limpid, almost Palestrinian pieces of Giovanni Croce at the end. Hyperion records this young choir well, not at the London Oratory School but at St. Augustine's Church, Kilbourn, London, which has a spacious enough acoustic to put this music across. These are indeed Sacred Treasures of Venice, but this is also an album from which one can learn.

© James Manheim /TiVo

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Sacred Treasures of Venice: Motets from the Golden Age of Venetian Polyphony

London Oratory Schola Cantorum

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Jubilate Deo omnis terra, C. 136

00:05:19

Simon Perry, Producer, Executive Producer - Giovanni Gabrieli, Composer - Adrian Peacock, Producer, Recording Producer - Charles Cole, Conductor, MainArtist - Tom Mungall, Recording Engineer, StudioPersonnel - London Oratory Schola Cantorum, Choir, MainArtist