Ex Cathedra, Jeffrey Skidmore - Fire Burning In Snow (Baroque Music From Latin America) Label: Hyperion Catalog#: SACDA67600 Format: Hybrid-SACD, Album, Stereo, Multichannel Country: UK Released: 02-2008 Genre: Classical Style: Baroque Tracklist: 1 Hanacpachap cussicuinin Verses 01-05 Anonymous - traditional [5'54] 2 Dixit Dominus a 3 choros Juan de Araujo (1648-1712) [9'09] 3 Silencio Juan de Araujo (1648-1712) [5'58] 4 Dime, amor Juan de Araujo (1648-1712) [5'38] 5 ¡A, de la región de luces! Juan de Araujo (1648-1712) [4'04] 6 Hanacpachap cussicuinin Verses 06-10 Anonymous - traditional [4'52] 7 ¡A, del cielo! Juan de Araujo (1648-1712) [4'08] 8 ¡Fuego de amor! Juan de Araujo (1648-1712) [6'28] 9 En el muy gran Padre Ignacio Juan de Araujo (1648-1712) [3'14] 10 Hanacpachap cussicuinin Verses 11-15 Anonymous - traditional [4'50] 11 ¡Salga el torillo hosquillo! 'Guadalupe Juegete' Diego José de Salazar (c1660-1709) [4'20] 12 Dios de amor Juan de Araujo (1648-1712) [3'52] 13 ¡A, del tiempo! Juan de Araujo (1648-1712) [7'24] 14 Hanacpachap cussicuinin Verses 16-20 Anonymous - traditional [5'08] Notes: ‘For fire burning in snow is the effect of love’. The final line of Juan de Araujo’s Dime, amor gives this recording its title and conjures up the passion and dramatic contrasts which make this disc such a delight. Araujo has been described by many commentators as the greatest Latin American composer of the age, although much of his music is still rarely performed. Little is known about the man (he was a disruptive student in Lima and involved in litigation in La Plata), and there is almost certainly more material to uncover. He was born in Spain in 1648 and emigrated at a young age to South America with his parents. After a period as organist at Lima Cathedral he lived in Panama and Cuzco, where a few of his manuscripts are found, and from 1680 he spent the last thirty-two years of his life as organist at the cathedral of La Plata, now known as the Bolivian judicial capital of Sucre. This disc includes one of his largest pieces, the triple-choir setting in eleven parts of the first great Vesper Psalm Dixit Dominus. This substantial setting is through-composed and vividly captures the dramatic elements in the text with a dazzling display of polychoral techniques. Silencio is a ravishing, double-choir lullaby which makes a complete contrast with the dramatic exchanges in the triple-choir ¡A, del tiempo! and ¡A, de la región de luces!. The fiery ¡Fuego de amor! is written for four choirs. The extraordinary imagination of Araujo in his choice of texts, his sensitivity to word-setting, his melodic, harmonic and textural inventiveness are remarkable, if not breathtaking. Ex Cathedra’s uplifting recordings of Latin American Baroque polyphony are always eagerly awaited, and here they present more great music, hitherto hidden in obscurity but alive with melodic beauty and joy. Performances are infectiously energetic and dazzlingly stylish. [quote] Review by Stephen Eddins Fire Burning in Snow, the third volume in Ex Cathedra's series of Baroque music from Latin America, is strong testimony to the vitality of the musical scene in South America in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The bulk of this album is devoted to the sacred and secular choral music of Juan de Araujo (1648-1712), who was born in Spain, but whose family moved to South America when he was a child. He lived in Peru and Panama, but spent most of his adult life in La Plata, Bolivia, where he was the organist at the cathedral. The music recorded here is notable for its almost Monteverdian range of styles and expressiveness. This selection of Araujo's strongly rhythmic work includes a rigorously polyphonic motet for triple choir; a simple, lovely lullaby for women's voices; and many stylistically diverse choral villancicos. The standout work on the CD, though, is Hanacpachap cussicuinin, a 20-verse Peruvian hymn in the Quechua language that was the first example of choral polyphony published in the Americas in 1631. It's broken into four sections of five verses each, and performed with ensembles of differing sizes and varying accompaniments. The anonymous hymn has a startling grandeur, and even with 20 verses it's so compelling that it never wears out its welcome. Ex Cathedra Consort and Baroque Ensemble sing and play with high spirits and polish. Conductor Jeffrey Skidmore is to be commended for bringing this repertoire, much of which has never been recorded, to light, and for delivering such lively realizations and energetic and full-bodied performances. This SACD should be of strong interest to anyone who loves Renaissance and Baroque polyphony and fans of choral music with a Latin flavor. [i]allmusicguide[/i][/quote]