Dominique Vellard - Missa Nunca Fue Pena Mayor (2011)

Dominique Vellard’s interest in music from the Iberian Renaissance has been constantly reflected in the performances and recordings of his Ensemble Gilles Binchois across the last three decades and all his experience and insight in this area is now being brought to bear on a new recording (a sparkling addition to his work for Glossa) of the Missa Nunca fue pena mayor by Francisco de Peñalosa, a composer who Vellard regards as being “a composer of extreme importance and a ‘classic’ of the Spanish Renaissance long before Cristóbal de Morales.” In addition to the Mass – regarded as Peñalosa’s masterpiece – Vellard adds a selection of motets and hymns, which includes not just Sacris solemniis but also the Memorare Piissima (over which scholars have long debated its precise attribution).

Dominique Vellard, together with four other singers specially chosen for this repertoire, is joined in these performances from Maguelone Cathedral by the rich instrumental brass talents of the Toulouse-based Les Sacqueboutiers, led by Jean-Pierre Canihac and Daniel Lassalle. This new Glossa release, emphasising the label’s happy and skilled flair with early music from Spain, adds significantly to the meagre selection of recordings devoted to Peñalosa, is graced inside by a thoughtful essay by the foremost scholar of early Iberian music, Tess Knighton, and on the outside by the striking usage of a painting by another of Peñalosa’s contemporaries, Pedro Machuca.