Officium Ensemble, High days of Portuguese polyphony

The decades around 1600 are a golden age for Portuguese polyphony. Hoewel Spanje often claims all the attention in music history, but a tradition of its own flourishes in Portugal that is at least as rich and refined. In cities like Évora – a humanistic center with a cathedral and university – and the Alentejo region, a repertoire emerges that unites devotion, rhetoric, and timbre in a unique way. Officium Ensemble – since 2000 the reference for Iberian polyphony – reveals the success story of the Portuguese Renaissance with work by, among others, Manuel Cardoso and Estêvão Lopes Morago and some contemporaries from the region. The program moves between intimate passion music and grandly set multi-choir pieces, some of which remained unheard for centuries. With their agile voices and clear choral sound, the twelve singers reveal what makes Portuguese polyphony so special: concentrated expression and a surprising vitality.