Tag: Choral music

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Recording

Clérambault: Te Deum, Histoire de la femme adultère

CD cover Clérambault Te Deum Histoire de la femme adultère Van Mechelen

Choeur de Chambre de Namur, A nocte temporis, directed by Reinoud Van Mechelen
58:36
Versailles Spectacles CVS163

Member of a family with a long musical association with the French court, Nicolas Clérambault (1676-1749) is today remembered principally as arguably the finest composer of the French secular cantata. However, he was also a distinguished organist who held the post of organist of Saint-Sulpice in Paris from 1715. Commenced in the mid-17th century, the building of the church of Saint-Sulpice (a replacement for a much smaller original church) was not completed until a century later. It is likely that Clérambault’s Te Deum was one of a number of his works given at the lavish opening celebrations in July 1745. Although designated ‘à grand choeur’ and according to reports originally performed by 100 musicians, it is overall less ostentatiously spectacular than familiar examples of the hymn by Lully and Charpentier. While the scoring includes the expected trumpets and drums, they are used sparingly, while in keeping with the custom for French settings the work is colourfully multi-sectional, contrasting solo passages with full choral passages. The composer makes the hub of the work the verse ‘Tibi Cherubim et Seraphim’ (To thee Cherubim and Seraphim), at once the most extended and elaborate passage in the work. Opening with the ethereal high voices of the angels’ praise of God, the section segues into dramatic contrast with the outburst of trumpets and drums at ‘Pleni sunt caeli’ (Heaven and earth are full). Other notable moments include the exceptionally lovely choral devotional passage at ‘Te ergo’ (We therefore pray).

While not aspiring to the use of 100 performers – the forces are fewer than half that number – the intimacy of so much of the writing makes for a highly satisfying reading of the work. The many solos and duets, often involving quite florid melisma, are well taken by a fine team, with haute-contre Reinoud Van Mechelen, tenor Guy Cutting and bass Lisandro Abadie particularly distinguishing themselves. The choral singing and orchestral playing are equally satisfying.

If the Te Deum is something of a discovery, I’m tempted to say that here it must give way to an even more exceptional work. As French Baroque music expert Catherine Cessac notes in her customarily valuable notes, L’Histoire de la femme adultère is something of an anomaly, an oratorio after the style of those of Charpentier, composed well after such works had passed into history. Like those of Charpentier (and his model Carissimi), it employs a narrator to tell a biblical story, in this case one of the most touching of those involving Christ’s ministry on earth. The story of the adulterous woman comes from the Gospel of St John, and tells of Christ’s forgiveness of a woman accused of adultery, a crime for which she would of course have been put to death. The story revolves around the famous words by which He puts her accusers to shame – ‘He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone’. Unsurprisingly, Clérambault’s setting puts these words at the heart of the oratorio, with a sublime passage of wonderment for the Narrator and chorus. But the work’s remarkable quality is apparent from the outset, a darkly sombre ‘simphonie’. In addition to the Narrator (Abadie) there are roles for Jesus (Van Mechelen), the Adulterous Woman, beautifully sung with sensitive insight by Gwendoline Blondeel, and two Jewish accusers.

Anyone yet to discover Clérambault is urged to hear this exceptional recording. Then go on to explore some of the composer’s secular cantatas, starting with Orphée.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Traetta: Rex Salomon

CD cover Traetta Rex Salomon Rousset

Suzanne Jerosme, Eleonora Bellocci, Marie-Eve Munger, Grace Durham, Magdalena Pluta SSSmSA, NovoCanto, Theresia, conducted by Christophe Rousset
111:37 (2 CDs)
cpo 555 654-2

We owe the existence of Tommaso Traetta’s oratorio Rex Solomon arcam faederis adoraturus in Templo to a single vote. That was the margin by which the governors of the Ospedaletto dei Derelitti in Venice decided in the spring of 1766 not to adopt a motion calling for the suspension of all musical activities in the institution. As a result, in June Traetta was elected as maestro di capella of the Derelitti, one of four Venetian orphanages for girls, the best known of which is course the Pietà. The oratorio was first given the same year on the occasion of the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary that year (August 15). A decade later, it was again taken up by Traetta shortly after his return from a period of service in Russia with Catherine the Great. It is the score of the revised 1776 version that survives today and is employed in the present recording, which therefore includes the changes made by Traetta to accommodate different singers in a couple of roles.

Sung in Latin, the oratorio is in the customary two parts and is almost entirely without dramatic event, featuring only the visit of the Queen of Sheba (Marie-Eve Munger) to Solomon (Suzanne Jerosme ) and the conversion to Christianity of Adon (another visitor to Solomon’s court and a worshiper of the god Malach) (Magdalena Pluta). Otherwise, there is much in the way of obsequious praise of the wisdom of Solomon, the topic of the opening and closing choruses, which are well sung by NovoCanto, here being for women’s voices only composed of SAB parts, the bass part being sung an octave higher. Arias are of the da capo type, with the main section fully developed but generally a very brief central B section. They are spread evenly between the five singers in each half of the oratorio, it being testimony to the high quality of the tutelage received by the girls of the Derelitti that a number of the arias, in particular those for Solomon and the Queen of Sheba are extremely demanding, requiring coloratura displays. In addition to the choruses and arias, the final number is a duet between Adon and ‘his’ mentor Abiathar (the excellent Eleonora Bellocci), who also gets the most dramatic of several highly effective passages of accompagnato recitative.

The present performance stems from the Innsbruck Festival’s 2023 edition and in particular pays tribute to the festival’s wholly admirable policy of including one production featuring talented young artists. Often, they may have been prize-winners in the festival’s own prestigious Cesti Competition, as is the case here with Suzanne Jerosme and British mezzo Grace Durham (Sadoc). The latter was indeed the winner of the competition in 2019, the year I attended the final (see report) and I’m delighted to say that here she contradicts my prediction that although I appreciated ‘the warm, rounded quality’ of her voice, Durham’s future career was unlikely to involve much early music. Her opening aria, ‘In alto somno’ in particular is sung with affecting dignity, and includes well-managed passaggi, while she does full justice to that in part 2, one of the loveliest in the work.

The most breathtaking bravura displays come from Marie-Eve Munger’s Queen of Sheba aria in part 2, ‘Tuba Sonora in monte’ and Solomon’s ‘In pace respirando’ (part 2). The former is sung with a superb display of confidence and control across a range that requires some chest notes and inspires a cadential high trill as well as stylish and elaborate da capo ornamentation. The Solomon aria is an outburst of overwhelming emotion in contemplation of the love felt for God. Jerosme is the possessor not only of a gleaming soprano but a splendid technique, including a trill, and the ability to communicate text meaningfully.

There are many other moments to cherish in a performance that is not only a joy in itself, introducing a fine work to the catalogue, but also to be cherished for the excellence of the singing by an outstanding, fresh-voiced cast. The experienced hand of Christophe Rousset guides this uplifting rendition unerringly, while obtaining excellent playing from the young players of Theresia, an international period instrument orchestra based in Austria. Potential buyers, who ought to be numerous, should note that although the booklet suggests it includes German and English translations of the text, it doesn’t. For those, you have to go online, from where they can be downloaded.

Brian Robins

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Festival-conference

Ambronay 2025

Ambronay Festival 2025

Over three weekends in September, this wonderful festival that takes place in an abbey not far Lyon, Annency and Geneva covers everything from trio sonatas to the B minor mass, and from “a duet for clown and viola da gamba”(!) to Mozart’s precocious “Die Schuldigkeit des Ersten Gebots”. Performers include well-known ensembles such as Vox Luminis, Ensemble Correspondances, Cappella Mediterranea and Pygmalion, but also – a trademark of this talent-fostering organisation – plenty of young artists who will undoubtedly continue to grow as a result of such exposure.

If you’re lucky enough to be in the area, check out the programme here: Dossier de presse_Festival 2025 (in French only, and accurate at the time of printing!) and support Ambronay’s initiatives if you can!

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Concert-Live performance

New Vivanco

A Spanish Requiem performed for the first time in London

If you’re a fan of the Spanish Renaissance and happen to be in London at the end of June, you won’t want to miss this exciting event! The choir is on Facebook if you want to keep up to date with their activities.

For those who can’t manage, the choir has Crowdfunded enough to make a CD, which will be available – and reviewed in due course on this website – next year.

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Recording

Georg Österreich’s resurrected treasures

CD cover Georg Österreich's resurrected treasures

Musica Gloria, directed by Nele Vertommen oboe, and Beniamino Paganini harpsichord/organ
79:06
Et’cetera KTC 1819

Rather disarmingly, the track listing for this generously filled CD notes at its conclusion, ‘All world-premiere recordings – as far as we know’. Well, here’s one listener happy to take the directors’ word for it, particularly given the meticulous research that has evidently gone into planning this recording. So who was Georg Österreich and what are his ‘resurrected treasures’? Well, for a start he was a very lucky man since he inherited a brewery. More importantly for our present concerns, he was a virtuoso singer born in Magdeburg in 1664. His early career was spent in Leipzig, Hamburg and Wolfenbüttel, but in 1689 Österreich was appointed Kapellmeister at the ducal court of Gottorf, now part of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany. There he made an extensive collection of German sacred music before the time of Bach along with Italian secular music. The former, now housed in Berlin and known under the name of Österreich’s pupil and its inheritor, Heinrich Bokemeyer (1679-1751), is the largest collection of north German sacred music in central Europe. The present CD, subtitled ‘North-German Cantatas around 1700’, is the result of intensive research on the collection by Baroque oboist Nele Vertommen.

The selection chosen by Vertommen and Beniamino Paganini, her co-director of the vocal and instrumental ensemble Musica Gloria, reflects the links to Österreich’s circle, including as it does two works by the man himself, one by his elder brother Michael (1658-1709), one by his teacher Johann Theile (1646-1724), one by Bokemeyer, and one by his singing teacher Giulio Giuliani (? – ?), the two last named being Latin settings. Also included is the more modern style of cantata by Johann Philipp Förtsch (1652-1732), one-time resident composer of the Hamburg Opera and later court physician at Gottorf to Duke Christian Albrecht of Schleswig-Holstein and then the Bishop of Lübeck. The works included are particularly notable for the wide variety of instrumentation and vocal forces required, the latter quite properly restricted to one-voice-per-part (OVPP). It is a general and welcome feature of the performances that the young singers of Musica Gloria bring a robust and strongly rhetorical performance style to all the music, singing also with generally excellent diction.

Arguably the most imposing and impressive of the works included is Georg Österreich’s own motet in the concertato style Weise mir Herr, deinen Weg, scored for four voices (SATB) plus ripieni and instrumental forces including two oboes, two violins, two violas, bassoon obbligato, cello and continuo. Worth noting is that the organ continuo is played on an Arp Schnitger instrument dating from 1690 and sited in the recording location, the Mauritiuskirche in Hollern-Twielenfleth on the banks of the Elbe. A setting of verses from Psalm 85 (86), it takes full cognisance of the potent and dramatic text, the solo trio at the supplicatory words ‘Wende dich …’ (Turn to me and have mercy on me) being especially telling, as is the beautiful bass solo ‘Denn deine Güte ..’ (For great is your love toward me).

Also impressive is brother Michael’s setting of the Lord’s Prayer for two sopranos, alto and tenor with instrumental parts for two violins, two violas, bassoon and continuo. But in truth there is nothing in the collection that is not without merit and worthy of these searching, communicative performances, which are not only worth discovering in their own right but provide valuable clues as to where Bach’s early sacred works come from.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Bach: Easter Oratorio, Magnificat

CD cover Bach Easter Oratorio Magnificat McGegan

Nola Richardson, Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, Thomas Cooley, Harrison Hintzsche ScTTBar, Cantata Collective, directed by Nicholas McGegan
70:00
Avie AV2756

Following their St John Passion recorded at a live performance in 2022, which I reviewed in August 2024, the Cantata Collective under Nic McGegan have now produced a CD with the Easter Oratorio (BWV 249) and the Magnificat (BWV 243.2). Much the same forces are employed, though some of the members – both singers and players – have changed for this 2024 recording. These are fairly traditional performances with a chorus of 6.4.3.3 (or 3.3.3.3.3 for the Magnificat), plus four independent soloists and a string band of 3.3.2.1.1. McGegan himself is shown in the photographs standing in front of a harpsichord with the organ at the back, though I fail to detect any actual use of the harpsichord. The chorus is well drilled and sings with commitment: most of the voices are well-suited to the music, although there are some among the sopranos and altos who sing with more vibrato than I would like.

When it comes to the soloists, the two singers I singled out for praise – the tenor Thomas Cooley and the bass baritone Harrison Hintzsche – in the John Passion are singing on this CD also. So are Nola Richardson and the countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen. Cohen has a florid voice, and clearly has considerable experience in opera, but sings well in ensembles with other singers; he is at his best in the Magnificat where he balances well with Cooley in Et misericordia, and with the two sopranos in Suscepit Israel. His Esurientes is a delight and quite different from his over-histrionic Saget in the Easter Oratorio. Cooley is imperious in the Deposuit and sensitive partner in Et misericordia, while he and Hintzsche make a good pair in the dialogue sections of the Easter Oratorio between the disciples Peter and John. In the 1725 original version, parodied for Easter day from a secular cantata composed only three months earlier, it was clearly sung one voice to a part by an SATB quartet of named characters following the secular version from which it was parodied. This explains why the B section of the opening chorus has a duet – sung here by all the tenor and basses rather than the T and B soloists – which feels strange in the middle of the ‘chorus’ which it became by the 1743 revision when the opening chorus had been rewritten for SATB. I do not share the press’s enthusiasm for Nola Richardson: I find her voice over-produced for this period of music, and thought I detected a real star in Tonia d’Amelio, plucked from the chorus to sing the second soprano part in Suscepit Israel, though she is not given the second soprano aria Et exultavit earlier, whose voice is sweet and true.

The other matter to mention is that McGegan follows the 19th-century tradition of changing the tempo between Quia respexit and omnes generationes – two parts of the same verse – going off at a good gallop, for which there is no textual authority, although it is what we have all grown up with. But do not let this deflect you from what is a perfectly produced example of the offshoots of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra of which Nic McGegan is now the Music Director Laureate. This is the premier Bay Area period instrument band, and deserves its outstanding reputation.

The overall impression of this well-chosen pairing is of a bouncy and jubilant celebration of the resurrection, with well-balanced scoring and judicious tempi set by McGegan, a past master at getting the overall feel exactly right.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Greene: Jephtha

CD cover Greene Jephtha Early Opera Company Curnyn

Early Opera Company, conducted by Christian Curnyn
99:22 (2 CDs)
Chandos CHSA0408(2)

The story of Jephtha and his rash vow to sacrifice the first person from his household he encounters on his return from battle if God will support his military action is known in music chiefly through the brief, but renowned 17th century oratorio by Carissimi (c.1648) and Handel’s eponymous final oratorio composed in 1751. To them can be added the version composed by Maurice Greene, the leading English composer during much of the period Handel was domiciled in London. Greene’s Jephtha appeared in 1737, but exact details of its earliest performance(s) remain shrouded in mystery. In his notes, Peter Lynan, who produced the edition used in the present performance, dismisses the theory that Jephtha was first given at the King’s Theatre during Lent 1737, no evidence for a public performance existing until its modern revival in 1997.

As with Handel’s setting, Greene’s libretto was the work of a clergyman, John Hoadley. However, the inexperienced Hoadley’s book is poor stuff compared with Thomas Morell’s, couched in stilted verse – ‘It is decreed, And I must bleed’ – and clumsily constructed. It also lacks any hint of the kind of dramatic element achieved by Morell’s fleshing out of the basic story with additional characters, while supplying a redemptive conclusion in which Jephtha’s daughter is dedicated to rather than sacrificed to God. Greene’s Jephtha is written for just four characters: Jephtha himself, his unnamed daughter (Iphis in the Handel) and two Elders of Gilead, the first a bass, the second a tenor. Like most oratorios of the period, it is cast in two parts (or acts; Handel’s is in three) and of course there is a substantial role for the chorus, Curnyn’s here being one of the successes of the performance. Like much else in the score, they cannot totally escape the taunt so often levelled at Greene that he was merely a lesser Handel. As so often with such lazy labels, there is plenty of evidence that the Englishman was his own man and we might at times more advantageously look back to Purcell. I’d suggest as an example the chorus that ends Part 1, ‘God of Hosts’. Here the reiterated war-like cries of ‘strike, strike’ have a distinctly Purcellian flavour. The final chorus is interesting, too. Since there is no redemption, the daughter’s death will happen, but unlike the sublimely tragic and bitterly chromatic chorus that concludes Carissimi’s Jephte, Greene’s follows a broad, throbbing course that is not so much tragic as understated, while reaching a peroration of real beauty. It is somehow very English.

Thanks are certainly owed to Christian Curnyn and his Early Opera Company forces for this first recording. Sadly, such gratitude must be tempered with the conclusion that Curnyn’s performance is lacking the kind of persuasive qualities needed to revive such a work. His direction overall is prosaic and lacking dramatic purpose. Too often tempos are sluggish and although the orchestral playing is neat and tidy it lacks spirit, while the almost certainly spurious inclusion of a theorbo in the continuo is greatly exacerbated by the narcissistic inclination of the player to be heard as clearly as possible as often as possible. The best of the soloists is the First Elder of bass Michael Mofidian, splendidly vibrant and producing some impressive low notes. Andrew Staples’s Jephtha is neatly and reasonably stylishly sung, but his lyric tenor is too small to convey the authority of the character, who was a renowned war leader. Mary Bevan’s Daughter lacks control in the upper register, though she is affecting in her beautiful final air, ‘Let me awhile defer my Fate’, with, to this listener at least, its affinity with Handel’s ravishing duet ‘As steals the morn’ from L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, which postdates Greene’s Jephtha by three years.

Even if it cannot match the Handel, one of his greatest creations, Greene’s Jephtha contains much fine music and if we ever start to place some value on our 18th-century English musical heritage, it will doubtless occupy a valued place.

Brian Robins

Categories
Recording

Maria: Josquin in Leipzig

CD cover amarcord Maria Josquin in Leipzig

amarcord
80:25
Raumklang RK AP 10124

Before I listened to this fabulous recording, I hadn’t realised how much I miss the music of Josquin. My first encounter (after a cursory introduction in my first year at St Andrews, when it all sounded terribly dry and dull) was the Hilliard Ensemble’s Reflexe tape (remember them?!) that opened – as does the present recital – with his gorgeous setting of Ave Maria, gratia plena. By the time I’d made it to fourth year, this was set as one of the test pieces in my “musical paleography” exam, which, trust me, was what we now call “a challenge”…

Amarcord’s performances are anything but a challenge; the voices blend beautifully and the recorded sound is rounded and crisp, capturing the natural decay of cadences before the composer’s next masterstroke is delivered.

Although I bought several, I was never taken by the mass recordings by The Tallis Scholars. I suspect that has more to do with having seen them perform and watching someone “conduct” two singers and not being able to get that out of my mind. Here, amarcord can interact freely with one another so that we hear Josquin, rather than someone’s interpretation of Josquin.

An interesting difference between the Hilliards and amarcord is their approach to ficta (the application of accidentals that are not in the original notation but may have been understood and applied by singers of the time). Especially at cadences, our modern ears “expect” a sharpened leading note if the bass note is what in our terms is the dominant of the “home key”. Applying that principle, the Hilliards sharpened many more notes than amarcord, but I cannot say for sure which version I prefer.

It is also a definite bonus to hear Ave Maria twice, the second time with its contrafactum text Verbum incarnatum , taken from a manuscript that is today held at the State Library in Berlin. Like the other manuscripts upon which the project is based, its origins lie in Leipzig; although there is no record of Josquin ever visiting the city, the rising popularity of printed music at the thrice-annual book fairs brought his music to Germany, where it was widely copied and performed. Other contrafacta on the recording include some of the composer’s secular chansons. Full marks to Raumklang, too, for the high-quality booklet; the informative essay, full translations of the texts, and a selection of magnificent illustrations from the sources.

If – like me – you have been lacking a bit of Josquin in your life, please do not miss this. Very rarely do I listen to a CD lasting over 80 minutes at one sitting – I enjoyed this twice this morning!

Brian Clark

Categories
Concert-Live performance

Bach: St Matthew Passion

Dunedin Consort, directed by John Butt
The Queens Hall, Edinburgh – 11 April 2025

The regular performance of the Matthew Passion by the Dunedin Consort is an annual event, with performances this year in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Perth. There is a regular clientele, in evidence from the animated exchanges in the bar before and after the performance, who know what they are coming to and appreciate it. And so they should.

John Butt directs his fine performances from the organ of coro 1, with two choirs of single voices, joined this year by a fine treble line from the RNSO Youth Chorus. His two orchestras, the first led by Huw Daniel and the second by Rebecca Livermore, include key players who have this music in their bones such as Katy Bircher, Alexandra Bellamy and Jonathan Manson, whose gamba playing in Komm, süßes Kreuz was out of this world; fluid, responsive to the voice and with that improvisatory abandon that goes with a rock-solid technique. But all the Dunedin players are expert, and with John Butt’s clear though minimal direction play together as one – there is no fussy interference from a conductor trying to show that he’s in charge, so listening and enjoying the responsibility of co-creating this remarkable music feels utterly natural – as was evident in the perfectly balanced Aus liebe, where Butt left the lingering pauses in the hands of the traverso and da caccias with the highly experienced Joanne Lunn.

Such trust among the musicians means that the players can give full attention and support to the singers, each of whom has to have both the vocal skills and the persona to manage their multiple roles and also the musicianship required to sing as a balanced consort. In this performance the singers in choir 1 were outstanding. Led by Hugo Hymas, whose voice is such pleasure to listen to and the clarity of whose diction makes the Evangelist’s part sound so effortless, I was amazed not only at his fluency – most of time (and not just in the Evangelist’s music) he was singing off-copy – but equally at his stamina: the tenor in the first choir has to sing everything in that part – solos, the Evangelist the big choruses and the turba parts as well. The others were of an equally high standard: the alto James Hall was new to me, but a perfect match in the choruses as well as a star soloist in a fluid and lilting Erbarme dich; Joanne Lunn, a seasoned singer of this music with a clean and clear voice is remarkable among international sopranos for her lack of wobble; and Ashley Riches, the bass-baritone is another singer with a dramatic and characterful voice – commanding in the part of Jesus but mellifluous in Mache dich where he was a tremendous match to the warm B flat major of the oboes da caccia, and capable of a fine and resonant low E as the final note in the opening chorus. Given their diverse voices, both the homophonic chorales and the polyphonic lines of the turba interjections were perfectly balanced, and sounded as one.

The same, alas, cannot be said for choir 2. A stunningly dramatic performance from the bass, Frederick Long, marks him out as a singer who can do both character and lyricism: whether as Petrus of Pilatus, he sung as a foil to Asley Riches; in the central section of Gerne will ich mich bequemen he presented as a Lieder singer but in the choruses he became a violone providing a secure bottom line to his choro. His Gebt mir was as good as I have heard. The tenor, Matthew McKinney, is promising with a nice easy manner and a voice that only occasionally sounded edgy as it did in the upper reaches of Geduld. The alto, Sarah Anne Champion, is a fine consort singer but has some of the more difficult lines in whole Matthew Passion in the long aria Können Tränen that follows the spikey recitative Erbarm es Gott. She set a splendid tempo, and the aria never dragged as it so easily can. I thought she was a real find for this demanding music.

The choir 2 soprano was Alys Mererid Roberts. This really isn’t music that suits her voice, and I felt for her. Even in the opening chorus, her voice – characterful and spikey, with a tight and incessant vibrato – was cutting through the ensemble, and this lack of blend was even more apparent in Blute nur. In such a small ensemble, every little discrepancy shows, and the tuning of choir 2 – based on such a good bass line – was frequently imperilled. Alys must be fun in the opera parts she is singing, but I don’t think the Matthew Passion shows her at her best.

This illustrates just how important choosing the right singers is. In small period instrument ensembles, where players frequently work together and yesterday’s students become tomorrow’s stars, people know each other well enough, and with instruments we have a pretty good idea of the sounds that work and blend convincingly. With singers, it is different. Unlike instruments, no 18th-century voices survive! Additionally, our conservatoires have few teachers who have the experience in 16th- and 18th-century singing techniques to help aspiring professional singers to learn the distinctive skills they need to sing stylishly with period instruments. So a young solo vocalist, emerging from today’s conservatoire formation as a singer, will not necessarily have the experience of how tuning, blend and even basic voice production that works with period instruments can be learned. What we do know is that in those days voices and instruments were equal partners in creating the polyphonic web of sound that Bach’s music demands.

No-one knows this better than John Butt, combining the inspiring direction of the Dunedin Consort and the playing of keyboard instruments with his role as a teacher and professor at Glasgow, continuing to research and explore how Bach’s music can be unlocked to nourish the soul and extent the horizons of our musical imagination.

David Stancliffe
Director of The Bishop’s Consort
Author of Unpeeling Bach, The Real Press, 2025

Categories
Recording

Bach: Mass in B minor

CD cover Bach B minor mass Pichon Pygmalion

Julie Roset, Beth Taylor, Lucile Richardot, Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, Christian Immler SmSATB, Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon
107:21 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
harmonia mundi HMM 902754.55

Everything in this new recording of the B-minor Mass is perfect – clarity, flawless instrumental technique and excellent voices – provided you want a performance that takes the complex compilation of Bach’s final years, treats it as a visionary, near mystical experience and expresses that in an idealised performance that owes much to the massive scale of the late romantic performance tradition. Pichon uses a choir of 12.6.6.6 with 5.5.3.2.1 strings who sing and play all the ‘chorus’ numbers, complete with a dynamic range from pp to ff. The acoustics of the Cathédral Notre-Dame-du-Liban in Paris’s 5th arrondissement are tremendous, giving the fortes – especially the timpani – a huge bloom: the sound engineers have done wonders in bringing both clarity and depth to this performance. This is a grand performance in the grand style: listen to the choir in the Cum Sancto Spiritu for the thrills, and the Credo for the high-octane drama.

This is fair enough in some ways. We have no idea if Bach himself ever heard, let alone directed, a live performance, but suspect he never did. So we can take the coup de théâtre in ‘a work that embraces the world’ (to quote Pichon’s programme notes) as justifying a performance that owes more to a romantic response to this great summary of Bach’s life’s work than to the scholarship and discoveries of the past half century.

There are a number of eccentricities. The change from the Domine Deus to Qui tollis treats these as separate numbers with no discernible relationship between the tempi, and a very mannered final ‘nostram’. And there is a very curious change between the Sanctus, taken in the old and slow = ‘majestic’ style till the singers are unleashed in Pleni to another thrilling display of vocal pyrotechnics with no link in tempo to what went before, reminiscent of early recordings by Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir. For me, these disjunctions reveal fail to deliver that overall coherence which a work like this demands and Pichon claims as a central plank of his performance. Another danger of disregarding the common practice in Bach’s day, when instrumentalists almost always outnumbered singers, is that the model of a choir accompanied by an orchestra means that some orchestral details are obscured. In the Patrem omnipotentem it is really hard to hear the 1st tromba’s entry in bar 29. A similar imbalance pervades the Crucifixus, where the traversi are inaudible amid the thunking string chords, where the theorbo – as in the Incarnatus – has a big impact on the texture.

Among the high points for me are the solo numbers where the issues of balance are less in your face: the wonderful Lucile Richardot’s Qui sedes, where her sense of the rhythmic complexities and interplay with the oboe d’amore are second to none, and Agnus Dei is a model of well balanced musicmaking with her near-miraculous breath control. The Benedictus, with Emiliano Gonzales Toro, is poised and elegant, using the acoustics to smooth over the long lines of both voice and traverso. The harpsichord (and theorbo) in Quoniam keeps the sprightly tempo on track, and Christian Immler is in great voice, even if the style is a long way from what was being explored in those exciting days in the 1970s, when he sang as a boy alto in Teldec’s pioneering Cantata recordings under Harnoncourt and Leonhardt. He is less comfortable in Et in Spiritum sanctum, where it feels as if he is trying to hold back the tempo in pursuit of rather more lyrical delivery. At the end of the nimble Confiteor, the adagio is prepared for with a massive rallentando and Pichon wallows in the chromaticisms, and slows even more in bar 138; at the end of the Et expecto resurrectionem there’s absolutely no rallentando at all, in contrast to many other final cadences.

I hope these comments help give readers a feel for this recording. In many ways, it is so good, and it is certainly full-blooded. But I cannot commend to EMR readers Pichon’s almost total disregard for what we have learnt over the past fifty years about Bach’s careful balancing between voices and instruments in his scoring that illustrates his desire for clarity and audibility. Welding a period instrument band onto a large modern chorus of trained singers, however talented, demonstrates what a range of complexities face the director of any actual performance. Unless your prime motivation is to let the music speak for itself, mantras like ‘a work that embraces the world’ continue to provide directors with an excuse for promoting their personal vision rather than trying to reveal Johann Sebastian’s: Soli Deo Gloria was his mantra at all times.

David Stancliffe