PALESTRINA, G.: Missa Papae Marcelli / Motets for Ascension Day (Officium Ensemble) (Anonymous - Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina)

Album review

This is a performance of Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli unlike any previously recorded. For one thing, it is performed as part of a sequence of plainchants and motets approximating the shape in which it might have been heard at festival papal services in Rome during the 1560s, thereby imaginatively returning the work to the form it had at its initial performance. For another thing, following contemporary Roman performance practice, it is sung a fourth lower than it has heretofore been recorded, thereby aurally returning the work to the color it had at its initial performance. The sum effect is that the Missa Papae Marcelli sounds entirely fresh and thoroughly new. As performed by Ensemble Officium under the direction of Wilfried Rombach, the music seems richer and warmer and rounder and fuller than ever before, but, better yet, it sounds deeper and purer and higher and more spiritual than ever before, too. As captured in Christophorus' reverberant but still detailed recording, this disc will be welcomed by anyone who loves a cappella sacred music.

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