Search - Charles Pott, Donald Greig, Henry Wickham :: Giovanni Gabrieli: Music For San Rocco

The BEST Gabrieli Album, and McCreesh's Best, Too

Timothy Dougal | Madison, Wi United States | 12/27/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Music for San Rocco" gives us a most generous collection of Gabrieli music(78 min.), beautifully performed and gorgeously recorded. The album as a whole is well paced, alternating the grand, the meditative and the purely instumental with intelligence and sensitivity. And the singing is always enthusiastic and downright rapturous!For me, this is also McCreesh's best album because it is not a reconstruction. I have heard several of these discs, and the reconstructions of Mass or vesper services might be interesting to listen to once, or maybe even twice if you have never been ot a genuine Catholic service of this sort. But frankly, liturgies, and liturgical chants are not entertainment, and generally are purely functional rather than entertaining. If you want just the real music on these discs, you have to program out 20-25% of the selections! More music and less turgid liturgical history for me, Paul!"

Excellent!

04/14/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I'm not much of an early music buff, but being acquainted with one of the soloists on the disc, I decided to spring for it. Am I glad I did! This is one absolutely stunning album. The incomparable David Hurley himself makes this disc a must for your collection."

Gabrieli, the original surround sound performer

Stephen J. Swellander | San Antonio, Texas USA | 07/03/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Being only marginally acquainted with the music of Gabrieli and his period, I have little to add to comments already made. I must confess that two discs worth of 16th century liturgical music runs a little long for me. I'll focus instead on the sound of the SACD version.



This was one of my first SACD purchases, and I chose it because I knew that Gabrieli wrote for multiple choirs situated in different sections of the church, and figured that, if the engineers did their jobs right, this could be a stunning demonstration disc.



It is.



Gabrieli's music is a natural of mutichannel reproduction. In Timothy Roberts' opening organ toccata, the sense of space in this recording is uncanny. "In ecclesiis" envelops the listener with front and back chorus and soloists whose voices soar with a fullness that we can usually only experience in a real basilica. The only thing missing is the upper reverberation that you get in a real church. If your rear speakers are elevated like mine are (I had to work within the limitations of my room--doors and such!), you may get some of that sense.



If you are at all interested in the music of Gabrieli, this is the recording to get. If you are set up for multichannel sound with an SACD player, be sure to get it in that format. To hear it with the separation and sonic detail of San Rocco, brings this very old music alive. The music was reportedly composed for the larger Saint Mark's Cathedral, but for recording purposes San Rocco was deemed preferable. The church itself is a beautiful instrument and is hard to capture faithfully in just two channels."