Pilgrimage to Santiago

**

Astonishingly Poor 2 Jan 2007

The other reviews of this disc have all praised it most highly, and there is indeed here much to be praised, but to my mind the disc as a whole smacks of poor preparation, self-indulgent conducting and a willingness to rely on reputation as a means of selling discs.

The music here is all to a greater or lesser extent connected with the shrine Santiago in Compostella, although it is hard to see a direct link between Dufay and Spain. The repertoire extends from the twelfth century to the sixteenth, and takes in monodic compositions from the Codex Caxtilinus and polyphonic masterpieces by Victoria. Indeed, there can be no criticism whatsoever of the music Gardiner has chosen to present on this disc, as any compilation which brings together Victoria's Vadam et Circuibo and works by Morales and Clemens non Papa is always to be recommended.

However, the singing on this disc can only be described as very patchy. Gardiner has assembled a choir of excellent singers, and at times he achieves a truly marvelous sound (witness the opening section of Vadam), but there are simply far too many moments where the tone is rough, aggressive and raw, and there is no real account taken of the line of the music. Most shocking is that the tuning of the ensemble is often shaky, with some distinctly rank points in the Mass by Victoria.

Gardiner made his name performing early music, but it seems to me that he has lost his touch, particularly in his choice of tempi. Perhaps in order to bring variety to what will always be a fairly homogeneous work (the Mass O Quam Gloriosum, being a parody of a motet, is inherently limited in the material at the composer's disposal), Gardiner chooses speeds that at times crawl with all the life of a dying snail, and at others race along as if he were embarrassed of the section and wished to finish as soon as possible.

Can I recommend this CD? Sadly I cannot: there are much finer recordings of all the repertoire here, and such a charmless offering as this deserves to be forgotten as quickly as possible.