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| Label Challenge Classics |
UPC 0608917287721 |
Catalogue number CC 72877 |
Release date 14 May 2021 |
""What actually transpires through the course of listening is that this series is arguably something far more special than a catalogue raisonné of the choirbooks' contents, and perhaps equally monumental." "Listeners who have seen the Cappella Pratensis perform in person or online will be aware that improvised polyphony is not the only aspect of historically informed performance in which they are currently leaders in the field." "Throughout the first three volumes of this series the quality of performance, interpretation and recording is superb, but the fourth instalment is certainly its crowning glory." "As a whole, the series to date is a masterclass in how scholarly study can be used to craft exciting and exuberant programmes.""
Early Music, 10-9-2024Cappella Pratensis | Tim Braithwaite
For almost forty years, the Gramophone Award-winning ensemble Cappella Pratensis has been renowned for its innovative approach to the performance of Renaissance polyphonic music, being one of only a handful of professional ensembles in the world who perform directly from historical notation, as opposed to transcriptions in the form of a modern choral score. In recent years, the ensemble has dived further into the musical traditions surrounding this repertoire by exploring historical methods of improvisation and pedagogies, as well as working within the contexts of liturgical reconstruction. The result is an inherently immersive approach, in which the performers draw on a truly embodied relationship with past musical cultures in order to provide convincing and engaging performances.
The singers of Cappella Pratensis all specialise in Renaissance music, and many hold positions at higher educational institutions at European universities and conservatoires, including the Conservatoire of Amsterdam, the University of Vienna, and the Schola Cantorum in Basel. Cappella Pratensis also enjoys a formal partnership with the Alamire Foundation, International Centre for the Study of Music in the Low Countries (Leuven) as ensemble in residence. The ensemble’s programming draws on both the wealth of knowledge and experience within the ensemble, as well as collaborations with leading scholars in the field. Cappella Pratensis increasingly combines this approach with innovative performance contexts, including regular collaboration with actors, digital animators, dance companies, and composers.
In addition to regular appearances at concert venues in the Netherlands and Belgium, Cappella Pratensis has performed at leading international festivals and concert series throughout Europe, North America, South America, and Japan, including the Boston, Berkeley, Utrecht, and York Early Music Festivals. The ensemble’s recordings have met with critical acclaim and distinctions from the press, including the Diapason d’Or, the Prix Choc and, for the last three CDs, three consecutive Gramophone Editor’s Choice mentions. Gramophone magazine recognised the ensemble’s recording of the Ockeghem Requiem as the best out of more than twenty recordings made over the last forty years. In 2022, Cappella Pratensis won the prestigious REMA-EEMN Heritage Project of the Year Award with the CD recording Apostola apostolorum. The ensemble’s 2023 recording of Obrecht’s Missa Maria zart won the Premio Abbiati della critica musicale, was awarded with a Disco Excepcional by the Spanish music magazine Scherzo, and was rated five stars by the Spanish magazine Ritmo. In 2024, the recording won a Gramophone Classical Music Award, perhaps the most important award for Classical Music in the world.
Cappella Pratensis makes it a priority to pass on the wealth of knowledge and experience within the group through an established educational program, which ranges from introductory outreach sessions in local schools to appearances at international conferences and festivals, including an annual ‘Summer School’ hosted by the Antwerp-based festival Laus Polyphoniae, the group engages in regular workshops at a higher educational level, which have been held with great success at such notable institutions as Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford.
Pierre de la Rue was a true Belgian: born in Tournai, he worked the first decades of his life in Brussels, Ghent and 's-Hertogenbosch, and spent his final years in Kortrijk. All the while, he only ever took one position as a composer, at the Flemish Chapel of the Burgundian court. There, he developed himself into a prolific composers, who wrote a large number of missas, motets and chansons. In these works, he shows his virtuosity particularly in the use of complex counterpoint. He wrote, for example, complete four-voiced missas based on a single melody.
De la Rue was also one of the first to compose polyphonic Requiems as a unique cycle of compositions in different keys based on the magnificat. Strangely, Pierre de la Rue's music is generally less known than the music by Josquin and his other contemporaries, yet there are just as many gems to discover in his body of work!
"What actually transpires through the course of listening is that this series is arguably something far more special than a catalogue raisonné of the choirbooks' contents, and perhaps equally monumental."
"Listeners who have seen the Cappella Pratensis perform in person or online will be aware that improvised polyphony is not the only aspect of historically informed performance in which they are currently leaders in the field."
"Throughout the first three volumes of this series the quality of performance, interpretation and recording is superb, but the fourth instalment is certainly its crowning glory."
"As a whole, the series to date is a masterclass in how scholarly study can be used to craft exciting and exuberant programmes."
Early Music, 10-9-2024
He restores here with perfect transparency a counterpoint of exceptional density, which does not eschew
dissonances (Kyrie), and the sometimes tortuous melodic designs.
Diapason, 01-10-2021
The five-part series about the Den Bosch choirbooks starts with a de la Rue-Mass of disarmingly high quality, embedded in a coherent liturgy format: sympathetically brought to life by Stratton Bull and Cappella Pratensis in the literal sense of the word.
Klassik.com, 12-7-2021
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