For his latest Glossa CD with Graindelavoix, Björn Schmelzer takes his lead from the funeral rites for the Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens in 1640, which might well have encompassed the Requiem Mass by Orazio Vecchi as recorded here, to demonstrate two interconnected facets of Baroque Antwerp. The city was a major centre for music printing and Vecchi’s Requiem was brought out there, as were the other works presented on this disc: George de La Hèle, Duarte Lobo and Pedro Ruimonte (the recording ends with three successive Agnus Deis!). The other facet is that of the image of Rubens’s art: full of energy, seductive, optimistic and scintillating. The Northern Baroque par excellence.

Included in this recording are an intriguing booklet essay (about the “Baroque in disguise”) and a stylised selection of pictorial images. Schmelzer encourages the listener/reader to enter into this strange world of artistic clashes and ruptures; not least the fact that Vecchi, a composer better known for his secular music popular in Venice, would have had his sacred music performed in Antwerp. This is achieved with Graindelavoix’s customary uncompromising – often provocative – vocal sound, complete with artfully-executed ornamentation.

“shocking with visceral, stone-ground sonorities in exciting, idiosyncratic, dangerous, Marmite interpretations.” - Choir & Organ, January 2017 (GCDP32110: Machaut - Messe de Notre Dame)

“compelling, because of the beauty of the voices and the evident care that has been lavished on so many details; provocative, because so many of those details will surprise, startle and perhaps infuriate.” - Gramophone Editor's Choice, June 2016 (GCDP32110)