This Apex reissue of Gesualdo recordings that originally came out on Erato in Europe is not just an example of a major label repackaging something from the backmost shelf for a quick buck, though it looks like one. These performances are by one of the pioneering and truly great vocal specialist groups in early music,
A Sei Voci, a group whose future is in some doubt, as its leader and co-founder Bernard Fabre-Garrus died suddenly less than two hours before a concert in August 2006. These recordings of Don Carlo Gesualdo's Responsories were among the first made of this literature in a comprehensive sense and originally issued on LPs in the mid-'80s. Since then, the
Hilliard Ensemble,
the Tallis Scholars,
BBC Singers, and the
King's Singers have all passed this way, and it is hard to say that
A Sei Voci's Gesualdo Responsories continue to outperform some of these others, though the recordings have held up surprisingly well. Pitch is sometimes wavery and changes with tape edits, vowel sounds are not always transparent, and there are a couple of sung clinkers here and there. The performances are tremendously earnest and natural, however, and are not compromised by the unwitting cheekiness apparent in some of Gesualdo recordings by English groups.
Gesualdo's Responsories are his valedictory works, written for his own chapel and published within two years of his death. They are startlingly chromatic and "experimental" sounding in their high-Mannerist style, though were not so to the composer. In any event, anyone who has an interest in sacred vocal music, or even classical music in general, should know them, and the low asking price for Apex's Gesualdo: Tenebrae Responsories certainly makes it easy to do so. Budget-minded classical collectors should be aware that this is a diamond hiding as a lump of coal. The sound could be a shade better -- the short Erato CDs once available with the same recordings did sound better than this Apex issue; they are considerably quieter and less upfront.