La Grande Chapelle

The 16th and 17th centuries marked a highpoint in music in the Iberian Peninsula during the period of religious polyphony. This concert by La Grande Chapelle, conducted by Albert Recasens, features work by four of the finest exponents of this kind of music (which this splendid ensemble spearheads). They are the immortal Tomás Luis de Victoria and his contemporaries Alonso Lobo (a disciple of Francisco Guerrero, another leading name in Hispanic polyphony), Pedro Riumonte (who travelled from his home town of Zaragoza to Brussels, where he settled and became a kapellmeister) and the Portuguese composer Manuel Cardoso. Although this is a style of music that owes much to Palestrina's powerful influences, its melancholic laments float mystically in the air, remaining on high, like a waft of incense or something that has issued forth from the strange colours and shapes of an El Greco painting.