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Appréciation d'ensemble / Overall evaluation :
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Reviewer: Anthony
Pryer
The four singers of the New York Polyphony ensemble are established and accomplished performers primarily of Renaissance music, although they do venture into other fields as well. Here they offer a selection of 16th-century Spanish composers, all of whom also spent some time in Italy. The earliest is Francesco de Peñalosa (d.1528) whose exceptional singing voice was praised by Pope Leo X. His compositions by contrast tend to be of the ‘serviceable’ kind with little harmonic or textural ingenuity. That said, the performers conjure out of his ‘Unica est columba mea’ a truly affecting and serene uniformity of tone and tuning, and in ‘Sancta Maria succure’ they present the humble petition of the text with steady assurance. They also provide a revelatory (first?) recording of extracts from Peñalosa’s Missa L’homme armé, but given that the disc is only 56 minutes long, it seems odd that the Kyrie and Sanctus are missing, despite being described in some detail in the liner notes. The works by Escobar (died after 1535) and Guerrero (d.1599) take the art of composition up a notch. The former’s Stabat Mater is performed with an odd kind of forcefulness, and the slightly blurred inner voices have to be rescued by some secure bass singing. In Guerrero’s spiritual madrigal ‘Antes que comáis’ we get a refreshing glimpse of the group’s dramatic skills, and the intricate textures of his ‘Quae est ista’ are very nicely displayed.
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