The Splendour of Florence with a Burgundian Resonance in Bloomington, MN

The full title of this album,
The Splendour of Florence with a Burgundian Resonance
, is a bit unwieldy, but it accurately states the situation in the Italian city in the 15th century. As it rose to prominence, its princes and mercantile families imported compositional talent from Burgundy and the other Low Countries. All the composers here hailed from that part of the world. The small vocal group
Gothic Voices
and harpist
Andrew Lawrence-King
present a program of mixed secular and sacred music. They offer familiar Renaissance names like
Dufay
and
Ockeghem
, along with some lesser-known names. One of these is the theorist
Johannes Tinctoris
, who proves that he was not simply giving advice to others for things he couldn't do himself; his motet,
Virgo Dei throno digna
, with its varied textures, is one of the highlights here. In general, the one-voice-per-part performances of
will impress listeners or not, depending on their attitudes toward the technique, but it is hard to understand why one would want to perform
's magnificent
Nuper rosarum flores
, a piece written for Florence's truly splendid cathedral, in this fashion.
Linn Records
splits the difference in the sacred and secular pieces with a recording in the disused 12th century Boxwood Priory, with better results in the secular chansons than in the sacred pieces. The demand for fresh performances of early Renaissance music may explain the appearance of this album on classical best-seller charts in early 2023. ~ James Manheim