Month: April 2018

[Katherine Watson, Helen Charlston, Iestyn Davies, Gwilym Bowen, Neal Davies SScTTB], The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Stephen Layton
107:43 (2 CDs in a case)
hyperion CDA68181/2

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]tephen Layton is lucky to have inherited  the first mixed voice Chapel choir of real distinction in Oxbridge, but he has honed it into a fine and responsive group of singers. Trinity’s choir has the great advantage that it never grows old, as the singers change every three or four years. For a bright, clear and clean sound, the combination of the 40 plus present and former members of Trinity’s choir with the substantial OAE band (8.6.3.3.2 strings) could hardly be bettered.

This makes it a big performance with the corollary of ‘needing’ big soloists. But does it? Given the way what we now call the Mass in B minor was assembled over the years, I have never been convinced that the traditional vocal scoring – singing the ‘chorus’ numbers full throughout while leaving a different group of single voices to sing the ‘solos’ – is either historically or musically defensible.

Surely the place to start is with a choir of five singers, adding one or more groups of ripienists when the instrumental scoring demands it rather than the romantic division into a choir singing all the ‘choruses’ ff to pp in the nineteenth to twentieth century style and getting in – even if a number are Trinity alumni – additional soloists who are not part of the choir to sing the single voice numbers.

That said, the choir is wonderful. Have you ever heard 11 basses sing Et iterum venturus est  in the Et resurrexit  with such unanimity of tone and clarity of diction? And which large choir has the agility to sing Et expecto resurrectionem  so neatly at that cracking pace? This is seriously good choral singing and Stephen Layton an inspiring conductor.
The playing matches the singing. The massed violins play Et incarnatus est  to perfection as the choir sings a controlled piano, and manage the same velvety tone with the quality performance by Iestyn Davies in the Agnus Dei, but the superlative quality of Lisa Beznosiuk’s flute playing in the Benedictus is not matched by Gwilym Bowen’s slightly wayward accentuation. The question mark about the sound/style of the soloists though is not raised by them but by the splendid mezzo Helen Charleston – a choral scholar from 2011-2014 – who can sing as cleanly as the rest, but ups her vibrato to match that of Katherine Watson who was in the choir rather earlier, in the Christe. Some phrases by both of them were limpid and lovely, but not a pure as I would have liked. Presumably it was a conscious decision by Layton to use contrasting singing styles to accentuate the distinction between choir and soloists, but this allies his recording firmly with the traditional performance style, as does the very Italianate rather than German pronunciation of the Latin.

So while I think the Layton/Trinity/OAE recording is quite excellent of its kind, it won’t displace the recording by Concerto Copenhagen directed by Lars Ulrik Mortensen and his ten singers as my favourite.

David Stancliffe

Balthasar Neumman Choir & Ensemble, Pablo Heras-Casado
58:22
harmonia mundi HMM 902355

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he selection from Monteverdi’s late collection Selva morale e spirituali  of 1640 made for this CD is designed to represent the different styles and scale of the works in this late published collection. From the pool of 16 able singers either single voices or sometimes two on a line are joined by doubling instruments for the larger-scaled items. Paris of violins and cornetti with four trombones, two gambas, a violone and lutes, organ and harpsichord all find a place in the tuttis. Cornetti are used in place of the violini in Laudate pueri Dominum primo  to good effect, but the constant use of a string bass even when there is just a single voice as in Jubilet tota civitas  often seems too much – this isn’t a Baroque basso continuo.

As so often, the male-voice numbers, like the three-voice Salve Regina, fare best vocally. Pairs of tenors sing neatly together, but I am less convinced by the pairs of sopranos in (for example) Laudate Dominum terzo, where the soprano roulades alternate with the homophonic lower voices. The sopranos are too operatic for my liking, and a sharp tonal contrast to the pair of cornetti, used in place of violins in Ut queant laxis. A curious effect is given by adding a dulcian to the bass for the running quavers in just measures 34 to 42, (as was the fashion in the running bass in Laetatus sum  in the 1610 Vespers in former years), and an over-enthusiastic plucker was intrusive in the ethereal last six measures where the sopranos resolve to a single G. Some of this fine music is over-egged: less is often more, when it is tempting to use your whole batterie de cuisine.

The diction is good, and words are projected well, even when the voices are doubled by trombones as in the ‘Crucifixus’, and the sopranos fare better in the ‘Et resurrexit’ with a pair of violins. The CD ends with a vigorous performance of the Magnificat primo  using (properly) just eight singers but a large complement of doubling instruments, with the much-reinforced bass line. Rhythmically it is exciting and dramatic under their guest conductor, Pablo Heras-Casado, rather than their regular director.

The pitch seems to be around 464, but there is no information on the editions, the instruments or where the recording took place. In many ways, I prefer the old recording of much of this music by Andrew Parrott and the Taverner players from the early 1980s, or the more recent complete one on three CDs by The Sixteen under Harry Christophers.

David Stancliffe