Orlinski and His Divine Soul

JAKUB JOZEF ORLINSKI –

ANIMA AETERNA — 2021

Let me be as clear as a summer sky reflected in a crystal glass of pure mountain water. This CD is a marvelous both surprise and discovery. The beauty of all the pieces is extreme, and it could even make you enter a state of ecstasy, without the pill of it, just the absolute exhilaration when wrapped up, boxed into this beauty, this very uniform beauty because the various pieces and the various composers are so perfectly articulated and blended together that you seem to be in one oratorio, and only one from its beginning to its end with all the various and necessary stages in-between. That beauty radiates from the music and the voice, the voices actually, of the singers, two voices that are so close that they are like the echoes of each other and back to each one from the other. But, even if it is mostly in Latin, we can read words and even Latin a little bit and we do hear the words and the meaning and we find out amazingly fast that the spiritual dimension of the CD is phenomenal. It is entirely, from beginning to end, a CD that lauds the glory, power, and greatness of God. In other words, it is a Catholic CD, Christian from the very start, and there is no escape, not one single piece or one single word that could be baroque but not entirely and exclusively Christian. This spiritual unity is striking and for once we just thanks Orlinski for bringing up such an achievement, not because we will get baptized tomorrow morning if we are not already baptized, but because such a perfect and pure unity makes this spiritual moment, this spiritual music a pleasure that is not in any way disturbed by some unspiritual note having to do with simple human love instead of the master-love from God and our absolute-love for this God of ours, if he is, and even if he is not.

This being said I would like to give a few notes on some pieces.

The first note will have to do with the first track that is musically centered on one word “horrida” in the way it is brought out by the music itself and the way it is sung with a phenomenal emphasis by Orlinski. But this first piece that is…