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GRAMOPHONE (01/2013)
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Aeon
AECD1226
3760058360262 (ID270)
Reviewer: Fabrice Fitch
Ockeghem and the ripples of his
Franco-Flemish influence
In a recent online round-up, I remarked that Obrecht’s
discography is more remarkable for quantity than consistency, especially in
the domain of the Mass. All the more reason to welcome this new issue from
the French ensemble Diabolus in Musica. This is an imagined memorial for
Johannes Ockeghem, with Obrecht’s Missa Sicut spina rosam (to give it
its correct name) as its centrepiece — fittingly, for it borrows liberally
from the elder composer’s famous Missa My-my. This performance is so
well judged that it positively invites repeated listening. The Credo,
which has two voices in the top range rather than one, is particularly
impressive. Obrecht’s ear for beguilingly full sonority is underpinned by a
masterly command of musical architecture, which depends for its full effect
on a fine judgement of tempo. Happily, Antoine Guerber’s ensemble
convincingly accounts for both. Moreover, its sound is quite distinctive;
grainy, but not obtrusively so.
The Mass is framed by two chansons, Josquin’s
famous Nymphes des bois and La Rue’s Plorer, gemir, both of which
employ the Requiem plainchant. Admittedly, the notion that the latter was
conceived as an Ockeghem memorial is speculative and Guerber’s completion of its
text is offered in the same spirit. Less successful are the two motets that
conclude the programme: Busnois’s celebrated, extrovert In hydraulis
calls for an intensity that the four soloists can’t quite summon, and Lupi’s
Ergone conticuit is a perfecfly respectable piece but stylistically far
removed from the rest. Never mind, for the Obrecht is superb.
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