ORLANDO DE LASSUS: Cantiones Sacrae – Collegium Vocale Gent/ Philippe Herreweghe, conductor – Harmonia mundi HMC 901984, 53:35 ****:
Philippe Herreweghe returns to his roots with this new recording of Orlande De Lassus’s last issue of Sacred Songs. He considered this set more serious in nature than his previous ones, and indeed the resultant texts – predominantly from the Old Testament – do indeed reflect on the man’s strive and the imminence of the last things, and the need to prepare for them. The music is probably not substantially more serious in tone, but it is highly reflective and properly meditative, which is exactly what the composer had in mind.
There is the usual flux of imitative counterpoint, and one can follow the development of the melody as it passes from voice to voice if one so chooses; but at the same time it is my guess that most people will just want to sit back and let these magnificent texts, uplifted by some splendidly conceived music and sung to perfection by Herreweghe’s 16-voice choir simply float over them. The complex polyphonic textures aided by Lassus’s many tricks of the trade for presenting texts as these (dividing the choir according to the meaning of the text for example) add to the wonderment of one of the finest masters of the Franco-Flemish Renaissance school, presented here in terrific sound and definitive performances.
— Steven Ritter
