Royal Academy of Music and Juilliard School Brass - Gabrieli for Brass - Audiophile Sound

This delightful album showcases students from the Royal Academy of Music, London and the Julliard School, New York, playing modern trumpets, tenor and bass trombones and what may be the St Jude’s Henry Willis organ (see below) in nineteen works by Giovanni Gabrieli and some of his northern Italian contemporaries, of which only Frescobaldi is well-known. All bar two are entitled Canzon or Sonata and use multiple or single choirs - or groups - of players (very helpfully the booklet lists the instrumental configuration of each piece). From the opening bars of Gabrieli’s Canzon duodecimi toni a 10 (II) one notes the lightness of touch, crisp articulation and freshness of tone and while Rheinhold Friedrich clearly wanted to emulate the sound of period instruments (they use Renaissance tuning), it may well also be down to the young players not having become battle-hardened, weary professionals! This style of playing has the advantage of clearly delineating line and texture, which means that the polyphonic strands that were typical of the era are always clearly audible, the use of light, but when needed, emphatic rhythmic emphasis avoids any sense of repetition and contrasts beautifully with the often ornate, more song-like trumpet parts (although the trombones in Gabrieli’s Sonata XVIII a 14 weave a beautifully burnished tapestry of sound). Rheinhold Friedrich is also adept at seemingly always choosing the tempo giusto, which means there is an excellent sense of flow and movement, but he isn’t afraid to relax in the slower numbers. All of which makes this an exceptional release, which when it had finished I immediately played again.

Performance: 5/5

Sound: 4/5