Search - Miguel Sánchez, Alia Musica :: Unica Hispaniae

One of Alia Musica's best disks; perhaps it should be correc

Robert Williams | 05/02/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Sometimes I really surprize myself by the music that I find on Amazon when I'm drunk. I can't imagine for the life of me that I even found this treasure of Alia Musica's at all. What could I have been looking for? It's listed by Amazon only under its title, "Unica Hispaniae". The ensemble name, Alia Musica, is plainly visible on the cover, even in Amazon's thumbnail photo. And 'Miguel Sanchez', their director -- and under whose name it also isn't listed -- appears just underneath (tho' this isn't visible to me). Also, for the record, there is nothing Finnish here (v. Amazon's product description at the top of this page).



Long reviews can be a little tirsome, so I'll merely try to get the ball rolling on this gem of early Spanish music. The opening virelai, "Cedit frigus hiemale", is chantesque in stature and ushers in a program that includes some instrumental pieces amongst those for voice. These latter are a wonderful variety of solo & ensemble pieces which mix male and female voices for even greater variety. Track 7, "Flavit auster", is hauntingly beautiful, with just the right touches of dissonance. And track 9, "Maria virgo virginum", is delicate and sensuous, yet devout and sonorous. These two tracks show just how much you can get away with in a church: the recording -- which is top-notch -- was made in a monastery which provides the properly echoic accoustics; it also admits the small birds sometimes encountered on recordings of this nature. Track 18, "Virgo sidus aureum" (by far the longest on the disk at 13:55), stands as the disk's climax. Every virtue of every other track is present here and evolves: song and chant grow mantric, and the merely mysterious becomes mystery itself.



No. of tracks: 22

TT: 75:41

Booklet: 40+ pp. w/texts in Latin, Spanish, French, & English. Bravo!



I can't believe that I reviewed this CD before that know-it-all bozo."