Search - Hans [1] Leo Hassler, Christian Erbach, Orlande de Lassus :: Lassus: Missa Bell' Amfitrit' altera

Great Brass and Choral Work

B. Marold | Bethlehem, PA United States | 12/11/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"'Festal Sacred Music of Bavaria, c1600' with works by composers Lassus, Hassler, and Erbach, performed by the Westminster Cathedral Choir and His Majesty's Sagbutts & Cornetts goes far to fill out my sense of the origins of music so popular in my hometown of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the home of a nationally famous Bach Choir and the seat of the Moravian church in the United States.



This perfectly explains the Moravian (originally from German speaking regions of Moravia in the old Austro-Hungarian empire, a stone's throw from fellow south German principality of Bavaria)tradition of the Trombone choir on major Christian holidays (a Sagbutt is an early form of the trombone).



This, this record bridges the gap between the medieval and renaissance chant and polyphony and the classical masses of the great Italian and German composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.



As usual, Hyperion does a great job of capturing this music and the performers are about as good as it gets with old music."