La Stagione Armonica, Sergio Balestracci - Scarlatti: Responsories for Holy Week - Holy Saturday (2018)

Posted By: tirexiss

Date: March 10, 2019

It is not certain that all the music on this disc is by Scarlatti; the manuscript that contains the nine Tenebrae Responsories for Holy Saturday and four Lenten motets is unsigned and in places incomplete. Conductor Sergio Balestracci is confident of their authorship, however, on stylistic grounds and because Scarlatti is reported to have composed settings of these Passiontide meditations in ‘the solid style of Palestrina’ for the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1708.
Not that anyone could actually mistake this music for Palestrina’s. The stile antico may have been considered the appropriate manner for church music in Italy at this time but it was still up to a point an evolving style, and Scarlatti’s little motets have their Baroque moments – a chromatic twist of the knife here, a dramatic word-isolation there. Anyone expecting anything remotely like the dynamic sacred music Handel was writing in Italy at this time – most notably Dixit Dominus – will be disappointed; but while this is essentially a rather austere listen, it is not a severe one. In fact the music is insistently beautiful, and if as a sequence the whole thing can seem a little featureless, it perhaps makes its impact best as a sustained background atmosphere of sorrowful contemplation.
The 16-strong La Stagione Armonica are not, it must be said, as smooth as many of the comparable mixed choirs in the field today, nor even as in tune, but the sound they make is appealing in its firm-throated expressiveness and in the way Balestracci’s interpretative detailing somehow creates an air of simple yet fervent piety, as if this really were all about the sufferings of Christ – ‘unsupported, alone and betrayed’ as Scarlatti put it – and not about putting on a ‘performance’.
The vocal sequence is punctuated by some muscly organ pieces played with aplomb by Carlo Rossi on the instrument of St Catherine’s in Padua, and rather splendid they sound too. – Lindsay Kemp

discogs

Track List:

Responsories for Holy Week, Holy Saturday
1 Toccata Per Organo 5:06
2 Motetto: Intellige Clamorem Meum 3:16
3 Responsorio: Sicut Ovis 4:51
4 Responsorio: Jerusalem, Surge 5:40
5 Responsorio: Plange Quasi Virgo 5:47
6 Fuga Del I Tono Per Organo 3:14
7 Motetto: Salvum Fac Populum Tuum 3:47
8 Responsorio: Recessit Pastor Noster 4:09
9 Responsorio: O Vos Omnes 4:15
10 Responsorio: Ecce Quomodo Moritur Iustus 6:37
11 Fuga Del II Tono Per Organo 3:04
12 Motetto: Exurge Domine 2:57
13 Responsorio: Astiterunt Reges 2:19
14 Responsorio: Aestimatus Sum 3:31
15 Responsorio: Sepulto Domino 4:34
16 Fuge Del III Tono Per Organo 2:40
17 Motetto: Miserere Mei, Deus 4:33

Performers:
La Stagione Armonica
Carlo Steno Rossi (organ)
Sergio Balestracci (direction)

EAC Log

Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016

EAC extraction logfile from 25. February 2019, 18:22

Sergio Balestracci / Responsories For Holy Week - Holy Saturday

Used drive : TSSTcorpDVDWBD SE-406AB Adapter: 1 ID: 2

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\FLAC\FLAC.EXE
Additional command line options : -8 -e -p -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "PERFORMER=%albuminterpret%" -T "COMPOSER=%composer%" %haslyrics%–tag-from-file=LYRICS="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albumartist%" -T "DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%" -T "TOTALDISCS=%totalcds%" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" -T "COMMENT=%comment%" %source% -o %dest%

TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 5:06.63 | 0 | 23012
2 | 5:06.63 | 3:16.00 | 23013 | 37712
3 | 8:22.63 | 4:51.00 | 37713 | 59537
4 | 13:13.63 | 4:40.00 | 59538 | 80537
5 | 17:53.63 | 5:47.00 | 80538 | 106562
6 | 23:40.63 | 3:14.00 | 106563 | 121112
7 | 26:54.63 | 3:47.00 | 121113 | 138137
8 | 30:41.63 | 4:09.00 | 138138 | 156812
9 | 34:50.63 | 4:15.00 | 156813 | 175937
10 | 39:05.63 | 6:37.00 | 175938 | 205712
11 | 45:42.63 | 3:04.00 | 205713 | 219512
12 | 48:46.63 | 2:57.00 | 219513 | 232787
13 | 51:43.63 | 2:19.00 | 232788 | 243212
14 | 54:02.63 | 3:31.00 | 243213 | 259037
15 | 57:33.63 | 4:34.00 | 259038 | 279587
16 | 62:07.63 | 2:40.00 | 279588 | 291587
17 | 64:47.63 | 4:35.12 | 291588 | 312224

Range status and errors

Selected range

Filename K:\Rips\Scarlatti A - Holy Saturday - Balestracci\Sergio Balestracci - Responsories For Holy Week - Holy Saturday.wav

Peak level 99.5 %
Extraction speed 2.0 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 43B9BDDE
Copy CRC 43B9BDDE
Copy OK

No errors occurred

AccurateRip summary

Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
Track 10 not present in database
Track 11 not present in database
Track 12 not present in database
Track 13 not present in database
Track 14 not present in database
Track 15 not present in database
Track 16 not present in database
Track 17 not present in database

None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database

End of status report

–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6

[CTDB TOCID: 6VNu5IWQN1rQoTCzAy_hNAfHOCY-] found
Submit result: 6VNu5IWQN1rQoTCzAy_hNAfHOCY- has been confirmed
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
2 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
3 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
4 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
5 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
6 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
7 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
8 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
9 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
10 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
11 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
12 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
13 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
14 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
15 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
16 | (4/4) Accurately ripped
17 | (4/4) Accurately ripped

==== Log checksum 3B0EC3950B626A3DCDE1358B87EFA428AC068E3147EDB9CE72971BD87386E73B ====

Thanks to the Original ripper (unknown)!

Download:

Download from icerbox.com