Cæli porta - 17th-century sacred music from Lisbon and Granada The Choir of The Queen’s College Oxford GUILD GMCD 7323 - TRACK LISTING and liner notes Something different for Christmas. Beautiful choral music from Portugal's golden age, by composers you mostly won't know. The centre piece is Lobo's 4 part Missa de beata virgine Maria, "concise, colourful, flexible & dynamic" writes Owen Rees, Director of Music at Queen's College, a specialist who regularly runs choral workshops in Portugal. The choir has a youthful, eager tone quality and all the solos are well taken. Full texts are provided, and every participant is named, making the disc a fine memento for the singers and their families. Thorough documentation includes a really interesting 8-page essay by Rees, who tells us all about Lobo, Pedro de Cristo, Manuel de Aviles etc - you can read it all on line and hear some samples, which is better than having me paraphrasing the text, and you having to take on trust the singing by these students (who presumably are studying a variety of subjects other than music). The recording is vivid and this disc stands out amongst the flood sent for review every December. Peter Grahame Woolf
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