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GRAMOPHONE (02 /2014)
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LPH010
Code-barres / Barcode : 5400439000100 (ID369)
Reviewer: Fabrice
Fitch
Given the impact of the first
complete recording of Gesualdo’s Responsories by the Hilliard Ensemble for
ECM over 20 years ago, it’s surprising that they’ve not more often been
attempted as a set; but the quatercentenary of the composer’s death is as
good an opportunity as any. To the music’s overt drama Philippe Herreweghe
responds with a typically more measured, controlled performance, so one may
say that the performance is cooler than the music. (In this respect as in
others, the Collegium Vocale Gent offer a decided alternative to the
Hilliards.) Dynamic contrasts are more often achieved by the full choir than
in reduced sections, and the composer’s trademark chromaticisms are rather
played down. The quality of understatement found in this ensemble’s recent
Victoria Requiem (11/12) is here also, albeit to a degree: the ‘cut glass’
quality I noted there is rougher-edged, for example where the transitions
between slow and fast-moving passages are more marked and harder to
negotiate. That said, other moments of impressive co-ordination (as at the
word ‘toluntur’ in ‘Ecce quomodo moritur iustus’) have the air of a
parade-ground manoeuvre.
Perhaps the one quality present in both sets is monumentality, albeit
achieved through different means: ECM’s close microphone position for the
Hilliards imparts real volume and presence, and their phenomenal blend does
the rest. A more distant recorded image captures the Collegium’s massed
sound, and the sense of distance objectivises the ensemble so that one is
drawn to the settings’ formal qualities, the more so as the repetitions
impart a sense of ritual, whereas with the Hilliards, one is struck by their
rhetorical effect. Individual details tend to be more striking as a result,
though Herreweghe can bring them out too when he chooses (as with ‘Velum
templi scissum est’). In short, both recordings will have their admirers;
and if my preference goes to the Hilliards, it should be said that the set
is one of their most impressive achievements. My only criticism of this new
set is that insufficient time elapses between the tracks, so that the
silence between and within Responds is not sufficiently differentiated.
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