Intégrale de l'œuvre

Description

The albums by the Octava ensemble released by the Polish label DUX dedicated to Bartlomiej Pekiel are now available in the form of a three-CD box set, featuring the complete collection of the twenty-nine surviving religious pieces by this composer. Pekiel is one of the great figures of seventeenth-century Polish music, representing the Vasa dynasty. From 1633 to 1655, he was the assistant to the Italian Marco Scacchi at the court in Warsaw before becoming a chapel master himself and settling in Krakow in 1657, where he held the same position. His polychoral style imitates the Italian stile concertato, prevalent in Venice with Gabrielli, where choirs and instruments respond to each other; however, Pekiel distinguishes himself by varying his writing style, his fluid and economical polyphony always supported by an embodied verb, original lyricism, and harmonic color. His two most famous masses, "La Missa Concertata La Lombardesca" and the "Missa a 14" with double choir accompanied by an ensemble including violins, woodwinds, and sackbuts, written in the stile moderno, evoke the magnificence of Monteverdi. The beautiful collection of motets leans more towards monody and reflects another aspect of the influence of the Cremonese, particularly in operas and madrigals. Listen to the feverish dialogue of "Audite Mortales." While the final "Missa Pulcherrima" (1669) for four voices indicates a return to Palestrina, it does so by trimming the vocal parts to retain only the essence, thus giving it the delicate purity of a diamond. The fugue, the only instrumental piece in the box set, reminds us that Pekiel was originally an organist. This Opus Omnia in the exemplary interpretation of the Octava ensemble (respect for the text, musicality) has now become a reference. (Jérôme Angouillant)