In the liner notes of the CDs it issues, Germany's MDG label offers a blurb touting its "genuine reproduction with precise depth gradation, original dynamics, and natural tone colors." It's reminiscent of the specs-crazy 1960s, but once in a while the engineers do meet the musicians at a charmed spot. Lamentationes is a disc of fairly obscure Renaissance choral music that's not going to hit the top of the classical charts, but put it on a high-end stereo and it'll get the attention of anyone who stops by. The small, seven-voice Josquin Capella performs three works that illuminate the special vocabulary associated with mourning in the High Renaissance. The disc opens with a set of Lamentationes Hieremiae Prophetae (Lamentations of Jeremiah) by Costanzo Festa, better known for his contributions in the zippy frottola genre. A marvelously expressive setting of this Holy Week text, it's followed by the Requiem of Johannes Ockeghem, perhaps the first complete polyphonic setting of the Mass for the Dead. The gorgeous Musae Jovis, Nicolas Gombert's musical memorial to Josquin, rounds out the disc. The notes by Meinolf Brüser dryly but accurately acquaint listeners with some of the expressive details in the music, but the surfaces are beautiful here as well: the sound environment of the Steinfeld Cloister in the German city of Eifel resonantly reproduces the gorgeous low sounds of the writing in all three of these works. Pitches centered a fourth or a fifth below the Renaissance norm were essential to the memorial style of these works, and the Josquin Capella renders everything transparently. This disc is a useful compilation of related Renaissance works, all slow and dark-hued. It's also a fine example of the engineer's art.
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