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The Virtuoso Soprano Motets of Giacomo Carissimi
Robert Crowe male soprano
Michael Eberth pipe organ
Robert
Crowe, male soprano, is pleased to announce the recording of his debut solo CD,
The Virtuoso Soprano Motets of Giacomo Carissimi, a co-production
of the Bavarian Radio and Profil Editions Günter Hänssler. These four motets,
researched and edited by Mr. Crowe himself, were written by Giacomo
Carissimi(1605-1674) probably for performance in his Roman church, St.
Apollinare, in the middle of the 17th century. Having at his
disposal the greatest castrato singers of Europe, Carissimi wrote sprawling,
dramatic soprano solo motets of fantastic technical virtuosity, interspersed
with sections of tender pathos, ranging over two and a half octaves, from low F
to high C, all to the accompaniment of full pipe organ.
The four
motets, ranging between 9 and 25 minutes long, were sprawling musical
centerpieces of church feast days, and were copied many times, greatly
influencing such later composers as Antonio Scarlatti and Henry Purcell. In
Carissimi’s musical language can be heard the influences of Claudio Monteverdi
and Alessandro Grandi(1570?-1630), as well as the seeds of the music of many
later composers, but the style is his alone. Carissimi, the first great
proponent of the oratorio form, composed these very theatrical expositions of
sacred texts alongside his better-known, dramatic solo cantatas, a form he more
or less created.
The name
of the concert tour of the works on the recording, Domine!, comes from
Domine, Deus Meus, a work which alternates between sections of declamatory
recitatives, gently lyrical dances, and fiercely dramatic, vocal pyrotechnics.
Four other motets, Adeste Mortales, Oleum Effusum Est(an extraordinary
work of 25 minutes, ranging from exultation to deepest agony and despair),
and Sicut Stella Matutina round out the recording. Using over 15
microphones…spread throughout the seventeenth-century Jesuitenkirche in
Mindelheim, Bavaria, the Bavarian Radio made the decision to record in Surround
Sound…so that with the proper stereo speaker configuration, the listener hears
the motets as if he or she is sitting in the church itself.
The
organist, Michael Eberth, is a well-known baroque organ specialist, a graduate
of the School of Early Music in Basel, Switzerland, and is on the keyboard and
early music faculties of the Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich and the
Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.
Robert
Crowe, described by the New York Times as “a male soprano of staggering gifts”,
and by Opera News as exemplifying “all that is special about countertenors(sic)—an
enormous range, agility, and ringing, pure highs”, is the possessor of a male
soprano voice of unusual power and expressive qualities. He has long been
singing leading operatic roles in European opera houses. He now welcomes this
chance to explore and present an almost completely unknown, but worthy, indeed,
thrilling musical genre. He has begun a concert tour of the motets in spring of
2008, with concerts in Trumbull, Connecticut, as well as a featured concert in
June at the Connecticut Early Music Festival. Many more concert dates are under
discussion, and will appear on the website,
www.robertcrowe.com
as the plans are
finalized.
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