Lamentazione

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Paul Agnew here makes a stunningly successful recording debut as conductor...this disc's unusual blend of authority and intimacy sets Agnew apart from Christie...this performance's bravura makes... — BBC Music Magazine, November 2011 More…

Release Date: 19th Sep 2011
Catalogue No: 0709072
Label: Erato
Length: 56 minutes

Gramophone Magazine

December 2011

Editor's Choice

Scarlatti, D: Stabat Mater in C Minor

Work length23:20

Album only

Paul Agnew/Les Arts Florissants
Paul Agnew
Recorded: 2010-09-25
Recording Venue: 25 September 2010. Abbaye d'Ambronay.

Lotti: Crucifixus a 10

Work length2:34

$1.30

$1.70

Les Arts Florissants
Paul Agnew
Recorded: 2010-09-25
Recording Venue: 25 September 2010. Abbaye d'Ambronay.

Legrenzi: Quam Amrum est Maria

Work length5:11

$1.30

$1.70

Les Arts Florissants
Paul Agnew
Recorded: 2010-09-25
Recording Venue: 25 September 2010. Abbaye d'Ambronay.

Caldara: Crucifixus a 16 voci

Work length4:01

$1.30

$1.70

Les Arts Florissants
Paul Agnew
Recorded: 2010-09-25
Recording Venue: 25 September 2010. Abbaye d'Ambronay.

Leo: Miserere (à 8 voix)

Work length18:32

Album only

Les Arts Florissants
Paul Agnew
Recorded: 2010-09-25
Recording Venue: 25 September 2010. Abbaye d'Ambronay.

Lotti: Crucifixus in 8 parts

Work length2:41

$1.30

$1.70

Les Arts Florissants
Paul Agnew
Recorded: 2010-09-25
Recording Venue: 25 September 2010. Abbaye d'Ambronay.

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The singers of Les Arts Florissants, “a golden choir” under the direction of tenor Paul Agnew, perform elaborate unaccompanied sacred works by Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, Leonardo Leo and Antonio Caldara, recorded in the Benedictine abbey at Ambronay in eastern France.

Les Arts Florissants, one of the most influential and prolific ensembles in the world of historically informed performance, was founded in 1979 by William Christie, who now regularly shares conducting duties with Paul Agnew, best known for his achievements as a tenor – not least with Les Arts Florissants.

In September 2010, as part of the annual festival at Ambronay in eastern France, not far from the Swiss border, Agnew directed the singers of Les Arts Florissants in a concert at the village’s 9th-century Benedictine Abbey. It presented a number of masterpieces of church music by Italian baroque composers: the Neapolitans Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725), Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) and Leonardo Leo (1694-1744), and the Venetian Antonio Caldara (1670-1736), who took charge of music at the imperial chapel in Vienna.

The younger Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater forms the lynchpin of this programme of sorrowful, a cappella pieces, which was recorded at Ambronay prior to the concert. It evokes the rigorous period of Lent, when, with the theatres shut, the public was deprived of operatic pleasures. Music-lovers could find compensation in this religious music since, as the regional newspaper Le Progrès reported in its review of the Ambronay concert, the composers produced: “sensual, richly ornamented music which places considerable demands on the singers and, above all, on the conductor, who must ensure its polyphonic contours and the transparency of the vocal lines.”

Under the headline “A golden choir”, the review went on to say that: “The choir fulfilled its role perfectly. Beyond the quality of the voices, often in the soloist class, and the supple and appealing tonal blend, the fluidity of the transitions and the precision of articulation proved that the ensemble … has few (if any) rivals in this repertoire.”

Reviews

November 2011

Paul Agnew here makes a stunningly successful recording debut as conductor...this disc's unusual blend of authority and intimacy sets Agnew apart from Christie...this performance's bravura makes it a benchmark, and flags the advent of an exciting new recording career.

December 2011

Regardless of occasional flaws inevitable from a live recording, textural transparencies resonate around the lovely Ambronay acoustic. The Choir of Les Arts Florissants is on exceptionally good form...Leo's Miserere (1739) is sung with the boldness, authority, lamentation and soft compassion that the composer variously demands...Agnew and his choir deserve plaudits for a masterly and valuable recording.

16th September 2011

Paul Agnew's direction throughout is exemplary, rendering Domenico Scarlatti's "Stabat Mater" with poise and piety, and expertly navigating Leonardo Leo's ingenious interplay of choirs and plainsong in his "Miserere a due cori".

8th October 2011

Fabulous pile-ups of dissonances and a polychoral lushness characterise most of the music, sung with exemplary clarity and expression by Les Arts Florissants under the British tenor, Paul Agnew. The astringency of the upper voices gives more bite to those spine-shivering discords.

Lamentazione

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