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Cabanilles: Complete Vocal Music review – "quirky harmonies and lively rhythms"
Amystis / Chenoll / Brilliant Classics
Nicholas Kenyon in The Observer, Sunday 13 April 2014
Joan Baptista Cabanilles was a choirboy and then organist at Valencia Cathedral in the 17th century, and is known to musical history for his feisty organ music. But the quite recent discovery of a body of vocal music is fascinating, and these two discs contain a Mass, an incomplete Magnificat and attractive popular settings in honour of the Blessed Sacrament. There are some quirky harmonies (and at least one that's unbelievable, perhaps a mistranscription), and lively rhythms from the chamber choir Amystis under conductor José Duce Chenoll. One over-intense soprano and a too prominent organ continuo, but fervently committed readings.
View album here