Frank Martin; Ildebrando Pizzetti - Mass; Messa di Requiem (James O'Donnell)

Information

Composer: Frank Martin; Ildebrando Pizzetti

• (01) Martin - Mass for double choir
• (06) Martin - Passacaille for organ
• (07) Pizzetti - Messa di Requiem
• (12) Pizzetti - De profundis

Westminster Cathedral Choir

James O'Donnell, organ & conductor

Date: 1998

Label: Hyperion

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA67017

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Review

These are magnificent performances. Only 18 months ago we had an outstanding record of Frank Martin’s beautiful Mass for Double Choir from Harry Christophers and The Sixteen. Now comes another of comparable quality and distinction, which you should acquire even if you have the Collins issue. Written in 1922, the Agnus Dei being added four years later, the Mass is one of Martin’s most sublime compositions. He never encouraged performances of it and it did not enter the public domain before the 1960s and took some time before it was firmly established in the repertory. A little to my surprise, I found it gained enormously from using boys’ rather than female voices. Some years ago when comparing Ralf Otto and the Frankfurt Vocal Ensemble with Stephen Darlington and Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, I thought the women naturally scored over the boys in terms of understanding and maturity. It is a measure of James O’Donnell’s achievement with Westminster Cathedral Choir that the gain in purity and beauty is at no time at the expense of depth and fervour. This is an altogether moving and eloquent performance, often quite thrilling and always satisfying.

Harry Christophers offers a group of rare Martin pieces including the magical Funf Gesange des Ariel, written for Felix de Nobel’s famous Netherlands Chamber Choir, and the Cantate pour le 1er aout for chorus and organ and the Ode a la musique. The new disc brings us a fine performance by O’Donnell of the Passacaille, not abundantly represented on CD at present, and the Pizzetti Messa di Requiem, also composed in 1922. Pizzetti’s music enjoys all too little exposure these days. His suite, La Pisanella, ought to be a popular repertory piece and I hope Daniele Gatti will champion it in this country. The received wisdom, however, is that it is in his a cappella music that Pizzetti is at his finest and in his 1951 monograph Guido Gatti spoke of his setting as “the most serene and lyrical of all ... from Mozart’s to Gabriel Faure’s”. Serene and lyrical it most certainly is, and it will come, I suspect, as a revelation to those encountering it for the first time. I intend no disrespect to the expert Danish performance on Chandos but this is in a different league. There is a fervour and a conviction about the Westminster performances of both the Requiem and the 1937 De profundis (which Pizzetti wrote to mark the healing of his breach with Malipiero). The luminous tone this choir produce in both these inspired and masterly works will ring in your ears long after you have finished playing this splendidly recorded disc.

-- Robert Layton, Gramophone

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Frank Martin (15 September 1890 – 21 November 1974) was a Swiss composer, who lived a large part of his life in the Netherlands. Martin's music was often inspired by his Christianity. The Petite Symphonie Concertante of 1944/45 made Martin's international reputation, and is the best known of his orchestral works, as the early Mass is the best known of his choral compositions, and the Jedermann monologues for baritone and piano or orchestra the best known of his works for solo voice. Martin's music is widely performed in continental Europe, and to a much lesser extent, in the United Kingdom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Martin_(composer)

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Ildebrando Pizzetti (20 September 1880 – 13 February 1968) was an Italian composer of classical music, musicologist, and music critic. Along with Respighi, Malipiero and Casella, Pizzetti was part of the "Generation of 1880", first Italian composers in some time whose primary contributions were not in opera. He taught at the Florence Conservatory (director from 1917 to 1923), directed the Milan Conservatory from 1923, and was Respighi's successor at the National Academy of St Cecilia in Rome from 1936 to 1958; Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was among his students. Pizzetti also wrote several books on the music of Italy and of Greece.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ildebrando_Pizzetti

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James O'Donnell (born 15 August 1961) is British organist, choral conductor and academic teacher. He was master of music at Westminster Cathedral in London from 1988 to 2000, and has held the position of organist and master of the choristers of Westminster Abbey since 2000. O'Donnell has been teaching at the Royal Academy of Music from 1997, was president of the Royal College of Organists from 2001 to 2013, and will be designated professor at Yale University, to begin teaching from 2023. He made around fifty recordings as organist and choral conductor, receiving several awards and honours.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O'Donnell_(organist)

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