Obrecht: Scaramella

Andrew Kirkman, The Binchois Consort

Released on 8/30/24 by Hyperion
Main artists: The Binchois Consort Andrew Kirkman
Genre: Classical

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The music of Renaissance composer Jacob Obrecht, especially in a specialist reconstruction of a piece known only in fragments, doesn't often show up on classical best-seller lists, but that is just what this release did in the summer of 2024. The reason seems to be that the music gets a really distinctive sound from the Binchois Consort, director Andrew Kirkman, and, not incidentally, engineers from the Hyperion label who work with the musicians to produce the environment they want. This is a small-group a cappella performance, and reactions to the album may well depend on one's attitude toward those; the Sistine Chapel Choir, presumably an ensemble with which any Flemish composer would have loved to work, was a much larger group. Yet, at least Kirkman and company offer a reason for performing the music this way, namely that Flemish sacred music of this period, they assert, was not performed in big cathedral spaces but in side chapels that were more intimate. Producer Philip Hobbs seeks to duplicate these spaces with a studio recording from Denmark Studios in Maidenhead, and the result is a Renaissance recording that makes listeners sit up and take notice. Another distinctive feature here is that much of the music is reconstructed, some of it by the late Philip Weller, who initiated the project and for whom the album serves as a kind of memorial. The central work is the reconstructed Missa Scaramella of Obrecht, presented together with the Italian-language Josquin song on which it is based. The booklet goes into some detail on the kind of work that went into the finished result, "a fascinating and absorbing exercise, part musical Sudoku, part detective work, and part (re) composition," write Kirkman and musicologist Fabrice Fitch. To general ears, there will be no audible joints, and the Obrecht piece is an excellent example of the cantus firmus mass, with the Josquin tune bursting out resplendently in the Incarnatus section. The program is filled out with other works by Obrecht, Antoine Brumel, and Alexander Agricola, with connections to Weller, and enhanced by an original neo-Renaissance work by Fitch. This is an absorbing release, and not only one for Renaissance choral buffs; it plunges the listener into the creativity of the era.

© James Manheim /TiVo

Obrecht: Scaramella

The Binchois Consort

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Philippe, qui videt me (Reconstr. Weller)

00:03:14

Simon Perry, Producer, Executive Producer - Anonymous, Author - Antoine Brumel, Composer - Andrew Kirkman, Conductor, MainArtist - Philip Hobbs, Producer, Recording Engineer, Recording Producer, StudioPersonnel - The Binchois Consort, Choir, MainArtist - Philip Weller, Contributor, Work Editor