The contents of this release are a good deal more focused than the Ave Maria title, or even the "Musik zu Marienfesten" (Music for Marian Festivals), would imply. In fact this is a collection of solo arias with Marian texts and instrumental sonatas, from southern Germany, Austria, and northern Italy, from the seventeenth century. Far from the collection of favorites the Ave Maria title suggests, all the pieces, with the exception of one sonata by Biber, receive their first recordings here, and many of the composers (Alberich Mazak, Pater Adalbert Grunde, Georg Christoph Leuttner, Alessandro Poglietti, Arcangelo Crotti, Rupert Ignaz Mayr) are quite obscure. As long as you're clear on what you're getting, this is a superior release. One major attraction is the singing of the young Spanish soprano Núria Rial. Her voice is not large, but it's exactly the right size for the cathedral dimensions of the music (nicely replicated in studio sound by the Berlin Classics label). It's light, agile, and expressive, with a very nice way of responding to the texts by fooling almost imperceptibly with the intonation. The program, whose outlines were suggested by veteran ensemble leader Konrad Ruhland, occupies the happy medium between an acontextual collection of arias and painstaking reproduction of an order of service: there are four groups of four pieces, each including one instrumental sonata (with strings and continuo) and concluding with settings of one of the traditional Marian antiphons (Alma redemptoris mater, Ave Regina coelorum, Regina coeli, and Salve regina). The third of these is by Rudolph de Lassus, one of Orlande's sons. The variety of music tells volumes about how the Venetian style spread northward and westward, with structures varying from quasi-operatic styles to cantus firmus-based pieces to squarish chorale-like settings (hear the Ave maris stella, track 11, of composer or compiler Pál Esterházy, of the great and musically influential house of Hungarian nobles). The historical-instrument group Bell'Arte Salzburg under Annegret Siedel, who also wrote the booklet notes, has a rather sweet sound that complements Rial's voice well. Texts are in Latin, German, and English.
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