Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (artist and date unknown, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
As I wrote yesterday, in the Bruno Walter: Complete Warner Classics Remastered Edition release, the last of the three CDs of compositions by Gustav Mahler is divided between that composer’s Kindertotenlieder and the pairing of Anton Bruckner with Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Those are “strange bedfellows,” to say the least; but they also receive seldom encountered performances. The Bruckner is the WAB 45 setting of the “Te Deum” hymn, composed in the key of C major. The CD then concludes with the “Stabat Mater” motet for double chorus (without instrumentation) by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. The choral resources are those of the Vienna State Opera; and the Bruckner setting includes four vocal soloists: soprano Elisabeth Schumann, mezzo Enid Szánthó, tenor Anton Dermota, and bass Alexander Kipnis.
To be fair, Dermota is the only name that is really familiar to me, since that dates back to the long-playing albums I had of operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. On the other hand, I am familiar with Alexander Kipnis only as the father of harpsichordist Igor Kipnis! Sadly, my encounters with music by Palestrina have been limited to visits to the Church of the Advent of Christ the King for the Procession and High Mass service, where Director of Music Paul Ellison would arrange that composer’s settings of the Mass performed by his Schola Adventus vocalists.
Personally, I wish that Palestrina would get more attention, particularly since his Wikipedia page describes him as “the leading composer of late 16th-century Europe.” Bruckner has fared somewhat better, since two of his symphonies were included in the recently-released Lorin Maazel: The Complete Warner Edition box set. Perhaps the general listening public regards both of these composers as too “scholarly;” but, as far as I am concerned, both Walter and Maazel were able to make convincing cases for attentive listeners to sit up and take notice!
