Westminster Cathedral Choir & Martin Baker - Alonso Lobo: Lamentations (2023) [Hi-Res]

The rarely heard Lamentations of Spanish Renaissance composer Alonso Lobo get top billing in the graphics for this Hyperion release, but more space on the album is taken up by the Missa Maria Magdalene, together with its model, the motet Maria Magdalene et altera Maria of Lobo's teacher, Francisco Guerrero. The mass is a really elaborate homage to Guerrero. It doesn't have a deeply personal stamp, but if you want to understand how the so-called parody mass of the Renaissance works, you couldn't do better than this pair of pieces as performed with proper sumptuousness here by the Westminster Cathedral Choir and expertly dissected by the notes of Bruno Turner. The Lamentations are dark, spare settings of the first Tenebrae Lesson for Holy Saturday (a second set has been lost, but this group was copied out as late as 1772, an indication of the high regard in which it was held). Turner himself has led a more personal performance, but these restrained, somber readings of perhaps Lobo's greatest and most committed work have much to recommend them. Hyperion's recording work in Westminster Cathedral itself is gorgeous, and the two rare, text-sensitive motets that round out the program are an added attraction. -- James Manheim