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Reviewer: Barry
Brenesal It’s always refreshing to hear a new recording conducted by Vincent Dumestre. He demonstrates a continuing respect for and knowledge of French Baroque performance traditions, but marries it to a desire to make the music fresh and engaging to modern ears. He is not above the occasional contrarian decision as a result, but it is always informed by those two principles, proper style and a need to communicate. There’s definitely a contrarian feel to this recording of his. The funeral march to Purcell’s Funeral Sentences, for example, is taken at an unusually quick clip, with the percussion very active, and producing an elaborately varied accompaniment from the start. Both solo and choral sections in all three works on this disc are treated with the kind of expressive force one might expect in some Baroque Italian works, rather than English ones—even English ones written to demonstrate grief over death. It works in context, but at the cost of underplaying the ceremonial in favor of something whose intensity approaches the operatic. One of Dumestre’s soloists goes further. Tenor Jeffrey Thompson supplies a bright, clean sound, but his tendency in recent recordings to widen vowels has here become extreme, especially when coupled as it is here with lengthy swells. As much can be said for his use of artificially heightened dynamics in “Beauty, thou scene of love,” from Welcome to All the Pleasures. Both “fire” in the phrase “Virtue, thou innocent Fire” and “desire” in “heat of Desire” all but vanish in a hint of a whisper, while “flame” in “Raptures of innocent Flame” drops out completely. The other three soloists are considerably better. I count the delicate, perfectly even flutter vibrato of alto Nicholas Tamagna and his ability to shade his tone (unusually so, for a countertenor) in his favor, and well suited to the relaxed tempo and light harpsichord continuo employed in “Here the Deities approve,” though his low notes remind us this is a man’s voice. Katherine Watson’s solo in “Hold, shepherds, hold!” is excellent, with especially fine tonal coloration on the line, “Must all your peace destroy.” Geoffroy Buffière, whose deep, commanding bass I enjoyed so much in Lully’s Cadmus et Hermione (Alpha 701; Fanfare 33:1) is just as fine here in “Let monarchs in their proud imperial seat”; while the phrase “never to return” in “No more this ling’ring blow” is treated with a refined mezza voce to excellent effect. The 22 voices of Les Cris de Paris perform with precision and superior attention to phrasing throughout. Surprisingly, that isn’t always all the case with Le Poéme Harmonique, which I’ve repeatedly praised in the past for their discipline and technique. That the Renaissance trombone in the Funeral Sentences’s Canzona movement might slur a bit is not completely unexpected, as it is among the more recalcitrant of instruments. The performance by a pair of uncredited recorders duetting in the last half of “Here the Deities approve,” however, is slackly uneven and sometimes breathless, even with the deletion of a small portion of their part. Given the fine technical professionalism evinced elsewhere, this should have been turned over to a pair of violins, or even the continuo. Dumestre does exhibit a tendency to rush through some movements, but he provides spacious, sensible resting places in others, such as Clarke’s beautiful “Oh, Dismal Day,” and a most supple and moving “Thou Knowest, Lord” in the Funeral Sentences. The sound throughout is first-rate, with fine balance between soloists, quartet, orchestra, and choir. This
wouldn’t be my first choice for the Funeral Sentences. That would be a
now-ancient version, once on Erato, featuring Gardiner leading the
Monteverdi Choir, and currently available as an audio download in admittedly
inferior quality. But this album is the only professional one currently in
print to offer Clarke’s Ode, and it’s well worth hearing. I could easily do
without Thompson’s highly artificial contribution and the subpar
recorders—or the poor timings; but the expressive treatment in all three
works is galvanizing, and Dumestre’s conducting is sure and knowledgeable.
Recommended, with reservations as noted.
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