Tír Na HiFi

magnificent music for a Sunday morning...

Next year it will be Niccolò Jommelli´s Tricentenary and fortunately record companies are beginning to show some interest. He was one of the most influential and popular composers between Handel and Glück, and it is hard to understand why he is virtually unknown today, since his music is superior in every sense.
Jommelli was the Italian equivalent of Johann Adolf Hasse, who traveled extensively and was popular from Naples to London and almost everywhere in between. Jommelli was highly regarded in Germany, and worked in several courts there before returning to his native Naples.
The title of this recording: Roma 1751 refers to the year Jommelli was writing church music there. This recording includes a superb Dixit Dominus and Beatus Vir, masterpieces of the High Baroque that one can only be thankful that are recorded in excellent performances.

Durante’s Magnificat has some hauntingly beautiful slow passages while other passages are taken at quite a pace. It is beautifully sung throughout and accompanied very sensitively.
The pace and tone slow down and there is some lovely choral writing in d’Astorga’s Stabat Mater and the contrapuntal writing is also very interesting. The Sancta mater is a lovely heart rending soprano solo which is exquisitely performed.
The pace and tone pick up again in Pergolesi’s Confitebor and we have some lovely, stylish writing both for choir, soloists and indeed the orchestra.

fergus wrote:


Durante’s Magnificat has some hauntingly beautiful slow passages while other passages are taken at quite a pace. It is beautifully sung throughout and accompanied very sensitively.
The pace and tone slow down and there is some lovely choral writing in d’Astorga’s Stabat Mater and the contrapuntal writing is also very interesting. The Sancta mater is a lovely heart rending soprano solo which is exquisitely performed.
The pace and tone pick up again in Pergolesi’s Confitebor and we have some lovely, stylish writing both for choir, soloists and indeed the orchestra.

Francesco Durante and of course Pergolesi belong to the great Neapolitan generation that preceded Jommelli. No wonder Naples was considered the most important musical center in the World in the first half of the XVIII Century.

these haven't had a dust down in a little while...