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Giovanni Gabrieli: Sacred Symphonies. CD recording: Ex Cathedra, with His Majesty’s Sagbutts & Cornetts, and Concerto Palatino, cond. Jeffrey Skidmore.

There are surprisingly few recordings devoted solely to the music of Giovanni Gabrieli, and the research impetus of this CD for Skidmore was to deploy the latest research on musical performance and liturgy at St Mark’s, Venice (where Gabrieli was organist for 28 years) in order to ‘orchestrate’ the music as if it were being performed surrounding the chancel, exclusively for the Doge and his important guests. This (perhaps surprisingly) is a relatively intimate space, using the larger acoustic as a resonating chamber, but not placing performers outside the chancel or immediate area. Evidence shows that there are galleries, ledges and balconies of different sizes on each side (i.e. to the right and left of where the Doge sat), and a space immediately in front of the screen using the pulpit, the ‘tub’ or a specially constructed stage that was occasionally erected. These areas defined the numbers of performers that it was physically possible to use, and documentary research can inform us of the resources available at St Mark’s in the early seventeenth century. Skidmore, in close consultation with musicological specialists such as John Whenham and Richard Charteris, as well as using information from contemporary treatises, chose to ‘orchestrate’ the music in many different ways, sometimes using continuo only for accompaniment, sometimes having solo voices with wind instruments taking other vocal lines, and sometimes using full ensemble. The brilliant vocal and instrumental colours and kaleidoscopic aural perspectives achieved through implementation of such research reveals (as critical reception of the recording attests) music of extraordinary imagination, passion and subtlety: grandeur but also an unexpected and ravishing intimacy.

The CD was given an International Record Review ‘Outstanding’ Award, and was Daily Telegraph Classical CD of the Week:

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