Search - Orlande de Lassus, Hilliard Ensemble :: Lassus: Motets and Chansons

Superb Performance but Almost Drowned in Tape Noise

Leslie Richford | Selsingen, Lower Saxony | 12/15/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The Hilliards (here: David James, Charles Brett, Rogers Covey-Crump, Paul Elliott, John Potter, Leigh Nixon, Paul Hillier, Michael George and David Bevan) recorded this introduction to the works of Orlando di Lasso (also known as Lassus) at the Priory Church in Boxgrove, England, in 1983. Unusually for the Hilliards, there is an instrumental accompaniment to some of the numbers, namely Stephen Stubbs on the lute, and he is also given a six-minute lute solo towards the end of the recital. The programme also includes three comparatively lengthy sacred motets in Latin and seven French songs with rather less-than-sacred texts (!). The motets have six to eight voices each and are very beautiful indeed, and Paul Hillier does well to wax enthusiastic about them in his notes; Lasso?s treatment of ?Herodes Rex turbatus est? in ?Cum natus esset Jesus? is a pointer to some of what Johann Sebastian Bach would achieve 150 years later. The chansons are mostly for five voices and are here given the kind of light but perfectionist treatment that has made the Hilliards so popular. The voices blend immaculately, and for performance there can only be full marks.



Unfortunately, however, the sound lags a long way behind. Although this is a digital recording (DDD), there is a considerable amount of tape noise to be put up with, so much, in fact, that the beautiful lute solo loses a lot of its attractiveness and becomes something to get annoyed about. I don?t know whether it was the abbey acoustics that were to blame for this or just the engineers, but this sound (the voices also sound somewhat ?cavernous?) is just not worthy of the group or the repertoire. And for that reason, I would say that this CD is one purely for dyed-in-the-wool Hilliard fans.

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