Huelgas Ensemble, Jos van Immerseel & Paul Van Nevel – Max Reger: Melancholy (Vocal Works) (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 50:01 minutes | 820 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Harmonia Mundi
This album features the works of German Romantic composer Max Reger by the Woergas Ensemble, which has made numerous rediscoveries in medieval and Renaissance polyphonic music over the past 50 years. Led by choral work specialist Paul van Nervel, the ensemble departs from the usual repertoire of ancient music to explore Reger’s vocal music. Max Reger (1873-1916) is a composer best known for his symphonies and organ works, but his vocal music has been largely ignored. Schoenberg described him as a “genius” and Hindemith called him “the last giant of music. Reger himself wrote that he wanted to be a “breathtaking” composer. Reger was familiar with Bach’s polyphony, and in his own compositions he explored the beauty of construction and masterful imitation of melody. This time the Huelgas Ensemble showcases Reger’s diversity, from emotionally rich arrangements of folk songs such as “The Little Star” and “I Dreamed a Night Dream” to Renaissance-inspired pieces such as “The Time of Man’s Life is Short.” The album also includes pieces such as “With Peace and Joy We Go,” which reflects the spirit of Bach, and harmonically complex pieces such as “O Death, How Thou Art Bitter,” in which Reger explores the limits of sound. Jos van Immerzeel joins as the historically sensitive piano accompanist on the concert grand built by Carl Bechstein in 1870, and as in his performances of Renaissance music, van Nevel, along with the singers, adds a unique touch to the polyphony of this repertoire, beautifully The music is beautifully colored.
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Huelgas Ensemble, Minguet Quartett, Paul Van Nevel – Rihm: Et Lux – Für Vokalensemble und Streichquartett (2009) (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:30 minutes | 989 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
„Et Lux“ is an alluring and timeless work for vocal ensemble and string quartet by leading German composer Wolfgang Rihm, here receiving its first recording.
The hour-long piece is dedicated to The Hilliard Ensemble and the Arditti Quartet who gave the world premiere in Cologne in November 2009 and its UK premiere later that month at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. This pairing of a vocal group and a string quartet specializing in early music and contemporary music respectively is replicated by the artists on this ECM disc – the Cologne-based Minguet Quartet and the Belgian early music group, the Huelgas Ensemble whose founder, Paul van Nevel, conducts the recording.
„Et Lux“ emerges as if from centuries ago, and reflects upon the musical processes that have shaped it, including the ritual of the requiem: ‘What we have is not music remembered but music remembering.’ It incorporates text fragments of the Latin Requiem Mass, which appear as components of a progressively realized whole. ‘Great significance is displayed by the reappearance of specific groups of words, for example ‘et lux perpetua luceat’ (and let perpetual light shine upon them). Through circling reflection the comforting yet disturbing meaning of the words may become perceptible.’
Reviewing the premiere performance the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung praised the work’s interwoven musical and linguistic elements while the Daily Telegraph said of its UK premiere: ‘Beautifully paced and very moving’. ‘Et Lux’ was recorded in February 2014 in Antwerp. The CD booklet includes an introductory statement by Wolfgang Rihm, and liner notes by Paul Griffiths and Wolfgang Schreiber.
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Huelgas Ensemble & Paul Van Nevel – Ludwig Daser: Polyphonic Masses (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:11 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi
This recording is dedicated to German Renaissance composer Ludwig Daser. Paul Van Nevel and the Huelgas Ensemble have recorded two polyphonic masses by the Munich-born composer, who was a contemporary of famous composers such as Orlando di Lasso and Cipriano di Rore. Ludwig Daser came from a wealthy Munich family. His composition teacher was to be the then famous Ludwig Senfl. Thanks to his compositional talent, Daser was promoted to Kapellmeister in 1552 – a post he held until 1562 (he was to be succeeded by none other than Orlando di Lasso). In 1572 Daser was then appointed Kapellmeister at the Stuttgart court of Duke Ludwig von Württemberg. A post he held until his death in 1589. Paul Van Nevel presents two masterpieces from Daser’s rich Munich church music output with the Huelgas Ensemble. Van Nevel has selected the monumental “Missa Praeter rerum seriem”. It survives in a Munich choir book written between 1544 and 1555. The “Missa Praeter rerum seriem” is a so-called “parody mass”. The model from which Daser was inspired is the six-part motet of the same name by the great Franco-Flemish composer Josquin Desprez. The second work, Daser’s four-part “Missa Fors seulement”, is of a completely different nature, it is an impressive example of the special characteristics of Franco-Flemish vocal music, which Daser had become acquainted with through Ludwig Senfl.
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Huelgas Ensemble & Paul Van Nevel – The Music Prints of Christophe Plantin (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:24 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi
The French printer-publisher Christophe Plantin (1520-1589), who has lived in Antwerp more or less all of his adult life, is not just anyone. He is credited with some two thousand publications, an absolutely astounding number in this era in which everything was done by hand, including the press done page after page, and yet he’s managed to publish a new book approximately every week during his 34-year career, with more than a thousand copies for each—up to eight thousand copies for his Hebraic Bible. His workshop included sixteen hand presses, served by thirty-two printers, twenty typographers, three proofreaders and many servants of all kinds: a true company. Hisopus magnum is a Bible in five languages: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaean and Syriac. He is also credited with works in the fields of medicine, botany, cartography, anatomy, mathematics, religion of course… And yes, also music! Because he published several major partitions, gathering contemporary sacred works from Jacobus De Kerle, Palestrina, Philippus De Monte, as well as several chansonniers gathering pieces from Andries Pervenage, Claude Le Jeune and colleagues. It is in this incredible stock that the beautiful Ensemble Huelgas drew, alternating between profane and sacred, choral and soloist, a sort of condensed musical Renaissance oscillating between ferocious Catholics (Antwerp was then under Spanish domination, and Philip II was very touchy about religion) and rebellious Protestants.
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Huelgas Ensemble & Paul Van Nevel – La Oreja de Zurbarán (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:54 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Cypres
The Huelgas Ensemble was founded by director Paul Van Nevel in 1971. It has specialized in choral music, frequently with instrumental support, from the thirteenth century on to the early Baroque. Their recordings of the High Renaissance have been especially prized. They have also been pioneers in the performance of the difficult Ars Subtilior repertory of the late medieval era.
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Paul Van Nevel – En Albion: Medieval Polyphony in England (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:18 minutes | 911 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi
With the almost vocal and stylistic perfection of his Ensemble Huelgas, Paul van Nevel explores English polyphony between 1300 and 1400. We do not know the authors of this music of the late Middle Ages, since these pieces have come to us anonymously, unlike those of the continent whose composers are known and often highly revered. This music accompanying the Hundred Years ‘ War has nevertheless exerted a great influence on the music of those remote times. The dozen sacred and secular a capella pieces presented here come from various sources preserved in the United States (New York), England (London, Oxford, Durham) and France (Tours, Chantilly). Albion composers paved the way for new music through their strange chromaticism and extreme and complicated modulations. The repertoire of this new album consists of mostly unknown and never recorded pieces that add to the knowledge of an era that remains largely to be discovered.
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