Bruckner and Gesualdo may be the two composers highlighted on the cover but, in fact, this first disc from the Monteverdi Choir since its traumatic split from its founding conductor John Eliot Gardiner last year begins with music by Palestrina. More accurately, it’s Palestrina refracted through 19th-century sensibilities – an arrangement of his Stabat Mater for double choir that Richard Wagner made for a concert in 1848, and which apparently has never been recorded before. An eight-part Crucifixus by Antonio Lotti (1667-1740) is included in the alternating sequence of Gesualdo and Bruckner too, a nod, says conductor Jonathan Sells, to the “classical influence which resonates through Bruckner’s music”.
These days, it’s more usual to hear Gesualdo’s music delivered by much smaller forces than the massed voices that are used here – there are 37 singers listed on the disc. “Our choice to perform the Crucifixus a cappella, and the Gesualdo motets with a relatively large choir,” says Sells, “adds to the sense that the whole programme could be a recreation of an imaginary 19th-century ‘historical’ concert.” But whatever the rationale, there are moments when the performances seem a little unwieldy, and the angular intensity of Gesualdo’s polyphony and its expressive chromaticism seems unnecessarily blunted. Certainly, the austere majesty of the Bruckner motets is strikingly conveyed; whether the juxtaposition of the two composers seems effective will probably come down to personal taste.
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