La Musica per San Rocco

Well researched and beautifully performed and recorded (…).Vocal ensemble Melodi Cantores and La Pifarescha on historic instruments are directed to great effect in this recording by Elena Sartori, and this is a highly enjoyable release which sounds terrific in plain stereo, and can blow your socks off in multi-channel surround. Thoroughly attractive. (Dominy Clements)

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(…) Elena Sartori’s gorgeous and brilliant excellent programme note. (…) in this excellently planned CD, there is much variety. With the inclusion of the famous In Ecclesis and ending with a superb Magnificat this would in many ways be a good place to start if you are, as it were, a Gabrieli virgin. In addition this disc has the advantage for some of being a hybrid SACD, ideal for this spacious repertoire. One can imagine standing high at the west end of St. Marks. Listen to the Magnificat especially to gain the best idea of what has been achieved. Ah, well, just enjoy. (Gary Higginson)

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See also the review by Dominy Clements.

The choice of program is very valuable, both for the musicians who animate as well as for us as audience. In fact, the musicians emphasize the compositional singularity of Gabrieli, both in terms of dynamic and those of the musical phrase. The interpretation provides a perfect intelligibility that underlines the close relationship of text and music. The interpretation's quality is characterized by a appropriate reading of the selected works and implementation's accuracy. It takes us to the heart of the Venetian spirit of the time, ranging from pomp to reverence. (Marie-Sophie Mosnier)

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Music for the feast of Saint Roches from the pen of Giovanni Gabrieli, colored sound offered by the ensembles Melodi Cantores and La Pifarescha, both expertly and temperamentally lead by Elena Sartori. The disc provides a very nice portrait of Giovanni Gabrieli as a composer of truly independent dimension. Of course, the multi-voiced major movements in their exchange of fantastic sound concentration and finely opened passages are of the noblest of spacial art. The 'Magnificat' for 33 voices gives a splendid impression thererof. But the canzoni, the intricate organ music or a surprisingly varied explicated litany show a most creative composer with the courage for individual solutions. Elena Sartori presents with her powerful formations an interesting as well as relevant program in full color. Interpretation: 4 Stars, Sound: 4 Stars (Dr. Matthias Lange)

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The excellent ensemble "La Pifarescha" and the singers of Melodi Cantores succeed under the direction of organist Elena Sartori in representing these complex compositions full of impressive grandeur and with that very grain of antique patina that lets the listener experience the spirit of music history. How instrumental and vocal choirs are coordinated and perfectly harmonize and even contrast, how the solo voices, each one for itself, develop entirely individual colors, and last but not least, how the organ playing by Elena Sartori ingeniously joins up, everything always alternating, this is what makes this CD an extremely worthy homage to one of the truly great masters of music history. (...) excellent recording quality (...).