ProStudioMasters.com

AAM Records’ newest release features the Academy of Ancient Music joining forces with The Choir of Keble College and director Matthew Martin in a landmark recording of Francisco Vall’s ‘forgotten’ Missa Regalis [1740]. Performed from a new edition by Simon Heighes, Valls’ fascinating (and frequently confusticating) juxtaposition of ancient and ‘modern’ compositional styles provides a intriguing glimpse into the treasure-trove of Spanish baroque music, much of which remains relatively unknown to the wider world. The Academy of Ancient Music is committed to the exploration of “new” works from the 17th and 18th centuries; AAM’s founder, Christopher Hogwood, was himself a keen musical detective, and this spirit of discovery runs throughout AAM’s activity. The movements of the Missa Regalis are interspersed with earlier keyboard works by both Francisco Corrêa de Arouxo and Juan Cabinilles. Director Matthew Martin writes: ‘there has been no attempt to create any particular formal liturgical sequence here, rather to place the Mass within a broader musical context using a style of keyboard writing most likely to have been familiar to Valls and his contemporaries.’ These organ pieces were recorded on the Aubertin organ in St. John’s College, Oxford and overlaid with Keble Chapel’s acoustic.