Martin Palmeri: Misa a Buenos Aires – Dagmar Linde

   in Choir & Organ (Jul, 2018)
It’s not clear why a couple of Astor Piazzolla and Ismael Spitalnik pieces have been tacked on to the end of Martin Palmeri’s rather beautiful Latin (American) Mass. The setting, for mezzo, choir, bandoneon and strings allows enough of the traditional to shine through without blunting the originality of Palmeri’s approach and his virtuosic handling of the instrumental elements. But the extra pieces just seem wrong in this context and I quickly programmed them out of the sequence, to be enjoyed separately. There are a couple of moments when Palmeri seems to change liturgical elements for the sake of changing them and the singers seem to sense the inauthenticity. That aside, …