Sally Garden, Roger Williams - Salve Regina: A Sacred Or Secular Adoration?

Wednesday 1st December 1993
Sally Garden, Roger Williams - Salve Regina: A Sacred Or Secular Adoration?

STYLE: Classical
RATING 6 6 6 6 6 6
OUR PRODUCT CODE: 20560-
LABEL: Alpha 951
FORMAT: CD Album
ITEMS: 1

Reviewed by Dave Massey

The title for this recording perhaps becomes more obvious when you read the sleeve notes and discover that the writer of the first piece, John Bull, was really something of a card, even in the bawdy Elizabethan era. The contemporary Arch Bish of Canterbury said of him, "The man hath more music than honesty, and is as famous for marring of virginity as he is for fingering of organs and virginals."(!). Also, many of the anthems and motets of the time had subtle undertones of propaganda and political comment. Other pieces on the disc include works by Bach, Purcell and Montiverdi. Sally Garden gives too much of an operatic treatment to the music to do much for me but there are others who would no doubt like that approach. Where she does excel for me is in her use of dynamics and her ornamentation.

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