1615 Archive

“1615, Gabrieli in Venice” – Choir of King’s College, Cambridge/ His Majesty’s Sagbutts & Cornetts/ Stephen Cleobury – King’s College SACD + Blu-ray

by Audiophile Audition | Feb 22, 2016 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews

A good place to start if you are an audiophile and don’t know this composer. Are there any out there? “1615, Gabrieli in Venice” – Choir of King’s College, Cambridge/ His Majesty’s Sagbutts & Cornetts/ Stephen Cleobury – King’s College multichannel SACD + audio-only Blu-ray KGS0012 (2 discs), 73:10 [Distr. by Naxos] ****: The only thing I wish is that these albums about Gabrieli in Venice were actually recorded there! Just like E. Power Biggs used to do in his Columbia series. But King’s College, though far from the acoustics of St. Marks in Venice, is no slouch, and so this new SACD + Blu-ray disc proves a sonic spectacular indeed. In fact the choir was arranged to give the maximum impression of how this music might have sounded in the revered church itself, and the surround effects—with in Blu-ray or SACD—are extremely effective. [Remember St. Mark’s is all mosaics inside and perhaps not the best acoustic environment…Ed] Of course the music here is taken from the 1615 collection Symphoniæ sacræ, that seminal publication that looks backward to the brilliant polychoral style as well to the more mature motets. And the good news is that most of this music, for […]