By "hcf" Revelatory

The critics are right: this recording is remarkable. This CD has won a Gramophone award, 4f Telerama, 10 Repertoire, and a Diapason d'Or. It has also made the list of the 50 Best Baroque Recordings (BBC Music). Listen: I'm not even a particular fan of Andreas Scholl, but this is one of my most favorite recordings (in a collection that numbers almost 1,000 CD's). Scholl is uniquely suited to the repertory such as this. His angelic voice may not always rise to the occasion in opera (although his performance in Solomon certainly challenges this assumption), but that same angelic voice is always at home in sacred music - blending calm reverence with a hint of emotion, in a manner that is both beautiful and heart-breaking. Listen to his Stabat Mater to know what I mean. Scholl's voice is also quite at home in the secular cantata Cessate Omai Cessate, a cry of unrequited love, albeit more elegaic than passionate. At the surface, this recording, featuring some of the world's most beautiful melodies, is an easy listening (is there a melody more ravishing than Larghetto from Cessate?). But the listening is also revelatory and rewarding because it leads to new layers of meaning and expression on each new listen.



By "Jill Gunsell" Fireworks and sacred pathos

Almost everything Ensemble 415 records is worth buying. With Andreas Scholl as soloist, this must be the star in their crown to date.
The secular cantata Cessate, omai Cessate is a real bonus. It's said to be "popluar" although personally I cannot remember having seen it advertised in live performance, ever. It's a flashy show-off piece for countertenor, and Andreas Scholl has plenty to show off. You won't hear vocal fireworks like this very often. First time hearing it will take your breath away ... make your hair stand on end.

The intro to the Stabat Mater - in full, not abbreviated as in some recordings - is the sacred mood music Filae Maestae Jerusalem. This piece brings the house down whenever it is performed live, too rarely, and Scholl gives it incredible depth. The steady, ominous rhythm is fabulously rendered by Chiara Banchini.

The Stabat Mater itself continually builds and falls away again as the insights of the writer of the original poem are successively laid before us. Andreas Scholl gives each stanza its own full impact but never loses the flow of the narrative. The last sections, in which the witness (of the Mother's agony at her Son's execution) turns from spectator to pray-er, are a miracle of sensitivity and expression. Andreas Scholl is a master.
http://www.amazon.com/Vivaldi-Stabat-Scholl-Ensemble-Banchini/dp/B0000007AM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1271429910&sr=1-1 (http://www.amazon.com/Vivaldi-Stabat-Scholl-Ensemble-Banchini/dp/B0000007AM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1271429910&sr=1-1