Robert Hollingworth

I Fagiolini, Robert Hollingworth – Victoria: Tenebrae Responsories (2024) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · March 4, 2024 · Comments off

In the late 16th century when vocal polyphony was developing into the excesses of the late Italian madrigal and the powerplay of multi-choir writing in Venice, Victoria, in Rome, chose to write his 18 Tenebrae settings with the simplest texture imaginable: four voices with internal sections for just two or three parts. These perfect miniatures force the question: how can so little mean so much? Victoria’s austere yet profoundly moving setting of the Responsories for the services of Tenebrae (shadows) is one of the great classics of Renaissance music. In this new recording sung by solo voices it is restored to the low pitch and voicing intended by the composer. These perfect miniatures are interspersed with nine of Christopher Reid’s heart-rending poems from his 2009 collection and Costa Book of the Year winner, ‘A Scattering’, a moving collection on the dying and death of his wife.

(more…)

De Profundis & Robert Hollingworth – Vivanco: Missa Assumpsit Jesus & Motets (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · January 29, 2024 · Comments off

The opulent male voices of De Profundis bring the complex—and gorgeous—sonic tapestries woven by Sebastián de Vivanco in Renaissance Spain thrillingly to life.

(more…)

I Fagiolini & Robert Hollingworth – Benevoli: Missa Tu es Petrus (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · October 5, 2023 · Comments off

“The 17th century is surely the most interesting musical period to go rooting around in. While the 16th and 18th centuries are generally more stylistically uniform, in the mid-17th century you never know what you’re going to find. Yet digging up another ‘undiscovered masterpiece’ does require quality control. Some music is better left in libraries, falling out of use with good reason; Orazio Benevoli’s Missa Tu es Petrus mass is quite spectacularly not one of those pieces. At the recording sessions, the performers were amazed by its bravura, its invention and drama – and its very significant demands on them! This was also true of the motets by Benevoli’s Roman contemporary, Bonifazio Graziani. These miniatures go further than Monteverdi in some ways but have a similar intensity. We hope you enjoy discovering them.”

(more…)

I Fagiolini & Robert Hollingworth – Alessandro Striggio – Mass in 40 Parts (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 23, 2023 · Comments off

I Fagiolini’s re-discovery and recording of Striggio’s longlost Mass in 40/60 Parts was ground-breaking when it was released in 2011. The premiere recording won awards around the world including the Gramophone Early Music Award and a Diapason d’Or de l’Année in France and remains a trailblazing account of this Renaissance epic. It is complemented on this album by Tallis’s Spem in alium which it is said to have inspired. The Gramophone citation particularly mentioned the new lustre brought to the piece by instrumental involvement and the clarity brought to the detail by the use of viols, cornetts, sackbuts, dulcians and more. Eight further works by Striggio are also included, each of them premiere recordings in 2011.

(more…)

I Fagiolini & Robert Hollingworth – 1612 Italian Vespers (2012) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · March 13, 2023 · Comments off

Following their award-winning recording of the Striggio 40-part Mass, I Fagiolini has returned with even more exquisite baroque music from the extraordinary year of 1612. The centerpiece is the crowning glory of the late Renaissance – Gabrieli’s Magnificat for a massive seven choirs – a work never before recorded as the music for five of the choirs has been lost. Conductor Robert Hollingworth and Renaissance scholar Hugh Keyte have taken the enormous task of reconstructing parts for the missing choirs. The album presents the best works of the greatest composers of the time in the form of a service of Vespers.

(more…)

I Fagiolini, Robert Hollingworth & The 24 – Monteverdi: The Other Vespers (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · March 13, 2023 · Comments off

2017 marks the 450th anniversary of Monteverdi’s birth. To celebrate I Fagiolini are celebrating Monteverdi’s works, along with their 30th anniversary, with a new authentic vespers setting.

Forming a response to Monteverdi’s timeless masterpiece Vespro della Beata Vergine (1610), these Other Vespers are centred around works from the end of his life, in 1640 following 23 years as maestro at St. Mark’s Venice. Including the celebrated Beatus vir.

A truly Venetian Vespers, arranged in a setting that could have been performed in Venice in Monteverdi’s time, with his sacred choral works alongside music of his contemporaries.

Culminating in Giovanni Gabrieli’s powerful and moving Magnificat in 14 parts: for three separate ‘choirs’.

To coincide with I Fagiolini’s 30th anniversary: the ensemble has always enjoyed a close association with Monteverdi.

Robert Hollingworth is a Monteverdi specialist; this is an authentic take on the repertoire, including the incredible soundworld of the cornetto muto alongside four male voices of I Fagiolini, in the Palestrina/Bovicelli Ave verum corpus – the first recording of such a reconstruction.

(more…)