Total Playing time: 72'35''
Recorded at St Michael's Church, Summertown, Oxford, July 2012
Released September 2013
Novum NCR 1387

 

Marc-Antoine Charpentier has been hailed as France's greatest seventeenth-century composer. This latest release by New College Choir shows you why. In the oratorio Caecilia virgo et martyr (H397), the composer tells in vivid emotional detail the story of St Caecilia, her faith and martyrdom. With an equal level of intensity he marks the death of Queen Marie-Thérèse in the grand motet De profundis clamavi (H189). And at the end of his life, as music master at La Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, he sets the psalm Conserva me Domine (H230) with a rare ingenuity. Three large-scale works from three different phases in Charpentier's life reveal with eloquence  his range and accomplishment – we need to hear more of his music!