Historically informed performances of early music is a tall order, but the vocal ensemble Capella Pratensis lives up to that challenge in their numerous award-winning projects. Singing from immense partbooks on jumbo music stands set in the centre of a semicircle of vocalists, the group has recently brought to life Jacob Obrecht’s marathon-length Missa Maria zart, a work dubbed ‘the Sphinx’ among the Flemish composer’s 30-odd masses. Director Stratton Bull leads the ensemble in a work that held audiences in thrall, reacting as though they were hearing Beethoven’s late quartets for the first time describing ‘a sense of the sublime…’ Vlad brings that sense of the sublime into Sunday morning with excerpts from this incredible work, recorded by the members of Capella Pratensis, and he’ll also contextualise Obrecht with his later successor Josquin Des Prez, whose birthday anniversary is this Sunday, back in 1521. Polyphony abounds with music by Tomas Luis de Victoria, also marking a birthday today, and keyboard composers Türk, Fischer, and Seixas are all to be found on Vlad’s playlist this Sunday morning.
RTÉ lyric fm, Sunday 27th August, 7am-10am
