The Hilliard Ensemble – Il Cor Tristo (2013) [Qobuz FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

The Hilliard Ensemble – Il Cor Tristo (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:01 minutes | 890 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Qobuz | Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM Records
Recorded: November 2012, Propstei St. Gerold, Austria

One of the world’s finest vocal chamber groups, the Hilliard Ensemble has a formidable reputation in the fields of both early and new music. The programme featured here exemplifies its distinctive style and highly developed musicianship in both repertoires. At its heart is a work commissioned by the ensemble from British contemporary composer Roger Marsh: Il Cor Tristo, a setting of cantos 32 and 33 from Dante’s Inferno, which deftly blends Renaissance techniques with a modern idiom. Marsh’s composition frames settings of Petrarch by 16th century composers Bernardo Pisano (1490-1548) and Jacques Arcadelt (c 1507-1568). As so often with the Hilliard singers, the transitions between “old” and “new” are seamless, and the album unfolds like a larger composition.

Here one must also credit composer Marsh, who notes that his “primary concern has been to keep Dante’s words clear at all times, and thus you will find in this contemporary music many devices more usually encountered in music of much earlier times.”

Marsh’s Il Cor Tristo was premiered by the Hilliard Ensemble in Perugia, Italy in September 2008. The version here was recorded, along with the Pisano and Arcadelt pieces, in November 2012, at the St Gerold monastery in Austria, location for outstanding Hilliard recordings including the collaborations with Jan Garbarek (Officium, Mnemosyne, Officium Novum) the Bach project with Christoph Poppen (Morimur), Arvo Pärt’s Da Pacem Domine, as well as motets of Guillaume de Machaut, 16th century English music (Audivi Vocem) and more.
Il Cor Tristo is released as the Hilliards both celebrate their 40th anniversary and embark on their final year together: at the end of 2014 the group will disband. The Hilliards’ last year will be a creative summing-up. David Jones explains: “As well as all the music that we have discovered and enjoyed performing over the years, we want to embrace the important relationships and people that have contributed to some of the remarkable landmarks and turning points in our career”.

The Hilliard Ensemble, formed in the early 1970s, had announced its retirement when this album appeared, but one is hard pressed to detect any diminution in the originality of its programming or in its trademark vocal blend, structured as as to allow each singer to emerge as an individual. Three composers are represented on this album of madrigals: Bernardo Pisano, Jacques Arcadelt, and the contemporary British composer Roger Marsh. Pisano has not been much heard since the rediscovery of the Renaissance Italian madrigal repertory in the 1960s and 1970s, and the simple, melancholy pieces here, focused on the “sad heart” of the title, are worth a new look. They helped define the madrigal as a serious form in contrast to earlier vocal genres like the frottola, and they paved the way for the Flemish import Arcadelt to give the genre its classic foundation. Marsh sets passages of Dante’s Divine Comedy in a vaguely madrigalesque style, with extended harmonies; his pieces are more declamatory than those of the Renaissance composers, and Dante is a long way from Petrarch (the prime author of madrigal texts). But somehow the music, which is mixed up in the program, all hangs together, and this may be due to the sheer force of the Hilliard Ensemble’s personality. The stark, haunting sound environment forged by ECM’s engineers, working in a small parish church in the Austrian Alps, may also have something to do with it. -AllMusic Review by James Manheim

Tracklist:
Bernardo Pisano (1490-1548)
texts by Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374)
1. Or vedi, Amor 02:20
2. Nova angeletta 02:09
3. Chiare, fresche, e dolci acque 02:48
Roger Marsh (b.1949)
texts by Dante Alighieri (c.1265-1321)
4. Il cor tristo, Pt. I 05:57
Jacques Arcadelt (c.1507-1568)
texts by Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374)
5. Solo e pensoso 03:20
6. L’aer gravato 01:42
7. Tutt’il dì piango 03:40
Roger Marsh (b.1949)
texts by Dante Alighieri (c.1265-1321)
8. Il cor tristo, Pt. II 06:01
Bernardo Pisano (1490-1548)
texts by Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374)
9. Si è debile il filo 03:24
10. Ne la stagion 04:51
11. Che debb’io far? 04:10
Roger Marsh (b.1949)
texts by Dante Alighieri (c.1265-1321)
12. Il cor tristo, Pt. III 12:44