Page is doubly iconoclastic in that he dares to lay part of the blame on Hildegard's music itself. If all Hildegard recordings sound alike, he says, that s in part because a lot of Hildegard sounds alike. She s a powerfully voiced but not a flexible or versatile artist. And her mode of enhanced ecstasy can become wearing, even sometimes unconvincing after a while, as if you wonder whether she really feels as much as her language is laying claim to. So maybe Hildegard should now be put on ice for 50 years and we ll have another go.
Page seems to be the only who is even slightly bored.
Thornton has performed more of Hildegard than anyone she is one CD shy of becoming the first to record the complete oeuvre. She is beyond belief a major genius for me. Thornton is particularly attuned to the way Hildegard ignored the formal conventions of her time in both her poetry and her music. Sometimes she does things that I absolutely cannot believe she even wants to. I think, She ll never pull this off, and by the end of the session I m blown away.