Andrew Carwood, The Cardinall's Musick - Palestrina: Stabat Mater (2003)

2010
This recording of Palestrina's music for Holy Week opens with the strong rising fifth of the Palm Sunday plainchant antiphon Hosanna filioDavid. We go on to experience the solemn moments of the liturgy through music of outstanding dignity and beauty. After the Procession, the stern Palm Sunday Offertory Improperium, a slow foreboding of what is to come, is viewed with quiet calm. The same mood is captured in two settings of the Institution of the Eucharist, the first subdued and hushed, despite the massive means - eight voices - the second even more so, with five low voices. The Good Friday Reproaches and Crux fidelis are expressed simply but effectively by choral homophony alternating with chant. Carwood's restraint, blending of timbres and careful phrasing can't be faulted.
In Palestrina's monumental Stabat Mater for double choir is central to the recording. Carwood highlights every articulation of the architecture, guiding the listener from suffering to hope. The subtle final entries of 'Paradisi gloria' reflect the calm of the earlier pieces, but with a glow foreshadowing the victory to come.
Christ's resurrection is marked in Terra tremuit by great leaping octaves and fifths and rapid rising scales. Mary Magdalene's fruitless searching, followed by the gentlest possible singing of the Alleluias in the antiphon Ardens est, finally yields to total rejoicing in the double choir responsory Congratulamini: the singers capture her moment of ecstasy; she's seen the risen Lord, and her joy is complete. The Easter gradual Haec dies is all lightness and flight, with cries of 'exultemus' chasing each other. The final sequence, Victimae paschali laudes, is a brilliantly dramatic interpretation with vigorous and imaginative rhythmic variety.