The Cardinall’s Musick
William Byrd Music for Passiontide
CLASSICAL PICK OF THE WEEK The Guardian (The Guide 24-30 Mar 2912)
Works include Mass for Four Voices, Plorans plorabit, St John Passion, Defecit in dolore, Libera me Domine et pone me, Vide Domine quoniam tribulor, Libera me Domine de morte, Ave verum corpus, Tristitia et anxietas
‘A beautifully conceived programme, beautifully presented.’ The Guardian
We are delighted to welcome The Cardinall’s Musick to St George’s for its debut visit, with a sublime men’s-voice programme of music for Passiontide by England’s first truly great composer, William Byrd. Byrd found himself caught between his own beliefs and a volatile religious landscape, and it is to this we owe the dark, passionate intensity of much of his Latin sacred music. This performance begins with Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices, one of three great unaccompanied polyphonic mass settings Byrd composed in the 1590s.
The Cardinall’s Musick is widely renowned for its extensive study of English Renaissance music, and has won the Gramophone Award for Early Music no fewer than four times. They have recorded the complete Latin works of William Byrd (Hyperion and Gaudeamus), the final volume of which – Infelix ego – was Gramophone’s Recording of the Year 2010. For this concert the ensemble comprises two countertenors, four tenors and two basses.
‘Add a sincere love of the music and a deep personal commitment in performance, and the voices of Andrew Carwood and his eight cohorts could probably start a blaze in the Antarctic!’ The Times
cardinallsmusick.com
Promoted by St George’s Bristol.