Album review: Emma Kirkby & Daniel Taylor, Stabat Mater

Published on Sunday 22 August 2010 18:49

**** BIS SACD 1546, £12.99

Downloading and sampling may be recent technological approaches to gaining access to music, but in the 17th century this involved either hearing a work first-hand, remembering and reworking it, or finding a copy of the score.

In this way Johann Sebastian Bach became familiar with Couperin's works even though he never went to France. He also picked up on Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, and added his own interpretation in Tilge, Hchster, Meine Snden, composed only a decade after Pergolesi's death.

The result is a striking remodelling that takes Pergolesi's work a stage further and, in this recording, adds dramatic vocal tension in the duets between Emma Kirkby and Daniel Taylor. Pergolesi's late Salve Regina and Vivaldi's Stabat Mater complete this well-rounded CD.

Download this: Lass Mich Freud Und Wonne Spren

This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday, 22 August, 2010