Westminster Cathedral Choir & Martin Baker - Palestrina: Lamentations (2007)

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina is a huge fish in the sea of classical music, but his music is far from easy to get to know. For centuries after his death, Palestrina's work was cited as representing the very culmination of the art of sacred counterpoint, and he was never forgotten as his contemporaries, such as Monteverdi, certainly were. Knowing that, a listener might come to Palestrina with the idea that "this guy is really going to lift me up into the clouds," only to find him strangely earthbound and plain-sounding. Lest one get the idea that the avatar of Renaissance polyphony has feet of clay, understand that the inner working of Palestrina's music has influenced composers ranging from Fux to Liszt to Penderecki. However, he had very narrow strictures in which to work, and modern audiences aren't as attuned to the sound of such music as were the sixteenth century bishops and cardinals who were in a position to judge the relative quality of Palestrina's efforts.

One part of the liturgy in which Palestrina was able to work in an idiom a little richer was in the services for Holy Week. Christ is crucified, dead, and buried, and composers were not expected to celebrate such grim events with the typically bright and happy polychoral music they would be required to produce for much of the rest of the church calendar. The Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet, though located in the Old Testament, form an important part of the services for Holy Week. Hyperion' s Palestrina: Lamentations draws from the third of possibly five sets of Lamentations that Palestrina produced, performed by the Westminster Cathedral Choir. In it we find something a little closer to the darker shades of coloring, akin to Monteverdi's Vespers, that modern ears are more used to.

Chorus master Martin Baker doesn't spend a lot of time lingering on languorous phrases, and doesn't need to -- Palestrina's long-breathed periods speak eloquently enough for themselves, though there are times when one wishes Baker would hit certain particularly delectable highlights with a tiny bit more emphasis. This is a highly traditional performance; the sound of the chorus is not uniformly smooth as in a "holy minimalist"-styled performance, a bass or two is allowed to warble and the boys are a bit scrappy in places. However, to perform Palestrina as if it were Arvo Pärt would not only be historically inaccurate, it would be undesirable, particularly in the Lamentations -- these pieces are borne out of a vividly human, visceral interpretation of divinity and salvation. Palestrina did not survive political domination by a foreign culture; he survived the plague, even as it deprived him of his family. The earthiness of Palestrina's music is what gives it gravity and a sense of the corporeal, and the Westminster Cathedral Choir seems to find the right balance of celestial purity and the real-world experience to represent Palestrina at his most eloquent. Hyperion's recording, made in Westminster Cathedral, is natural, expansive, and yet not over-reverberant. Hyperion's Palestrina: Lamentations is a very, very fine representation of what Palestrina is all about. -- Uncle Dave Lewis