One of the most painful results of the reorganization of the former Polygram under the Universal Music Group banner was that the musical world bade farewell to the L'Oiseau Lyre imprint. However, in time Decca came to realize that the lyrebird of old had a certain cachet with classical music buyers, and it reintroduced some titles beginning in September 2007 (though roughly half of them, at least at first, were only available in the form of digital downloads). Early music fanciers will doubtless eagerly embrace the return in hard copy form of 1989's The Pilgrimage to Santiago, the first of Philip Pickett and the New London Consort's forays into the mostly twelfth century songs associated with pilgrims to the shrine of St. James in Santiago de Compostela in Spain. For sources, Pickett reviewed a number of Spanish manuscripts, including the Codex Calixtinus and Las Huelgas, Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Llibre Vermell, searching for songs that specifically mentioned Santiago de Compostela. There are accounts and iconography extant that portray the pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela as a merry music-making bunch, and Pickett considered such visual and documentary clues in shaping these interpretations. A former member of the Early Music Consort of London and Musica Reservata, Pickett was already well informed in the challenges facing anyone inclined to interpret the Cantigas; they are all monophonic, and several consist of long, unwieldy texts divided into as many as 15 verses, if not more. Do you choose the best four or five verses and focus on those, or do all 15? Pickett utilizes both approaches, presenting somewhat condensed versions of certain Cantigas and, particularly in the case of "De grad'a Santa Maria," which runs nearly 20 minutes, going for the long version. As each verse is varied a little bit in some way, it never gets boring; in that particular piece, Pickett calls for a much larger complement of singers and instrumentalists than is usual for an early music group, in keeping with statuary he had seen at Santiago Cathedral. Other pieces are more modest in presentation, and in these settings the voice of Pickett's collaborator Catherine Bott is key; the freshness and rhythmic brio of her singing helps focus the New London Consort in equal measure to Pickett's own direction. Although responses may be mixed in regard to some of Pickett's later recordings, particularly of Baroque music, The Pilgrimage to Santiago remains one of his most extraordinary achievements and helped, in its time, to set new standards for the performances of Cantigas. ~ Uncle Dave Lewis, AMG

Estimated despatch 5-10 days after ordering.