CD Kleine Musik
“ipisilon” supplement, Público, 20th June 2008
Classical Reviews
"Game of Mirrors
The second CD from Sete Lágrimas combines the spirituality of the German baroque with a contemporary approach.
Cristina Fernandes
Kleine Musik
Sete Lágrimas Consort
Filipe Faria and Sérgio Peixoto (Tenors, harpsichord and musical direction)
Ana Quintans (soprano)
Murecords MU0102
**** (four stars)
After and auspicious recording debut with “Lachrimae #1”, the ensemble Sete Lágrimas has just launched another record of great artistic and conceptual consistency. ”Kleine Musik” combines a selection of works taken from the “Kleine Geistliche Konzerte” of Heinrich Schütz (1575-1672) with works composed for the group on the same texts by Ivan Moody (b. 1964), in a careful game of mirrors.
The combination of early and contemporary music is to be found in many international discographical projects, but has been quite rare within Portugal. “Kleine Musik” is not only a carefully studied conjugation of universes, in which Schütz’s music serves as inspiration for the contemporary view of Ivan Moody through a reflection of creative processes that use different languages. It is also a well-deserved homage to Schütz, one of history’s greatest composers, who has been almost completely absent from concert programmes in Portugal, but which has been part of the repertoire of Sete Lágrimas from the beginning. While the short pieces by the German composer included on the first CD were amongst the best performances by Filipe Faria and Sérgio Peixoto, in this second recording their affinity with the German’s aesthetic and his deep and intimate expressivity is confirmed. Their voices blend well in terms of timbre and there is a careful matching of phrasing and rhetoric, as well as an effective complicity with the instrumental ensemble, made up of experienced performers of early music.
The most impressive tracks on the disc, however, are those performed by the soprano Ana Quintans, on account of her very high technical level, her vocal beauty and emotional strength. The soprano, who enjoys an international career as a baroque specialist, also adapted well to the less-familiar world of Ivan Moody – as, for example, in O Misericordissime Iesu, on track 12.
The British composer, resident in Portugal for a number of years, has written other works for early instruments, and is very familiar with their possibilities and characteristics. His aesthetic does not seek radicalism, and is not obsessed with the avant-garde. Rather, it displays a certain stripped quality, even when the compositional processes are more intricate, and the transmission of an atmosphere in which spiritualty is clearly present. The transition between the old and the new can be a risky business, but in this case it is convincingly done, both in terms of musical content and interpretative coherence."
