What a wild ride this is, and from a source I have never heard of before! Consider if you will, a cathedral (Freiberg – Saxony) that happens to have a group of sixteenth-century musical instruments in nearly perfect condition not locked away in a vault as you might expect, but in the hands of music-making angels that are positioned high above the vault in the burial chapel. Strange? You bet, but it also offered the folks at the Music Instrument Museum of Leipzig University the opportunity to examine closely these aged wonders, and to chart specifications and ultimately reproduce them as modern copies. What you hear on these discs are sacred (disc 1) and secular (disc 2) examples of music produced by the masters of the cathedral, primarily Antonio Scandello (1517-80), Giovanni Battista Pinello di Ghirardi (1544-87), Orlando di Lasso—who actually turned the position down (1532-94), Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612), Melchior Frank (1573-1639), and Leonard Lechner (1553-1606).
The choral and instrumental work is marvelous, utilizing (aside from the two sopranos, counter-tenor, two tenors, and bass) a cittern, a gut-strung lute, shawms, trombones, cornets, harp, small treble and treble violin, tenor and bass violins, organ, tambourine, and triangle. They all provide brilliant splashes of renaissance color with technically adept execution and wonderful tone quality. There is a good mixture of choral and instrumental work on each disc, though I think the sacred side is perhaps the more interesting. The secular disc devotes much time to lute music and instrumentals in general, as you might expect. Dance, table, and entertainments were often done with a band of players alone, though sometimes singers would accompany in solo or group of parts.
Musica Freybergensis is an ensemble picked by the museum for the specific purpose of performing on these instruments, and they were picked very well, masters each. Roland Wilson was entrusted with the not-easy job of coming up with this program and basing the individual pieces on the instruments at hand as represented by those in the hands of the angels in the cathedral chapel, using the ideals of known Renaissance instrumentation. Texts and translations are offered in a first class production. Incidentally, the first movement of disc one features the ringing of the cathedral bells followed by a procession of instruments and singers, moving delightfully from the back of your surround setup slowly to the forward speakers – a great effect.
— Steven Ritter
