The Gramophone Choice

Gloria*. Exultate Deo. Quatre Motets pour le temps de Noël. Quatre Motets pour un temps de pénitence. Salve regina 

*Susan Gritton sop Polyphony; *Trinity College Choir, Cambridge; *Britten Sinfonia / Stephen Layton

Hyperion CDA67623 (56’ · DDD · T/t). Buy from Amazon

From the very outset of the Gloria it’s clear that this is a performance of real distinction. The gloriously pompous opening orchestral fanfare has a swagger and a self-satisfied strut which is one of those rare moments on disc where you would wish it were tracked separately so that you could just play it over and over again. But to do that would miss the scintillating choral entry, the basses starting the ball rolling with the kind of pent-up energy which you just know is going to explode in the most spectacular way. Other recordings have a pleasant, smiley quality here; Stephen Layton’s crew has an almost piratical swagger, buoyantly breasting Poulenc’s turbulent waves of barely restrained exuberance.

The 38 voices of Polyphony are augmented by 31 from Trinity College, Cambridge, while an unusually hefty contingent of orchestral players makes up the Britten Sinfonia on the disc. What results is not only music-making of immense power and vibrancy – take the riveting declamation ‘Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris’, hardly subtle or even particularly refined (the men shout and the brass blares) but unbelievably spine-tingling – but also an ability, brilliantly directed by Layton, to capture Poulenc’s ‘half monk, half guttersnipe’ musical persona (in Claude Rostand’s oft-quoted aphorism). Thus, in the final chorus of the Gloria, after the boisterous start, we have a moment of profound sanctity and another, crowned with incredible delicacy by Susan Gritton, of mouth-watering enchantment.

Not everything is quite so enticing: Gritton wallows a little too much perhaps in the ‘Domine Deus’, mischievously abetted by Layton’s almost kitsch romanticism. But it is the vivid sense of unfettered joy in the Gloria and the matchless intensity of feeling revealed in the motets that make this such a gloriously distinguished disc.

Additional Recommendation

Coupled with Stabat mater

Janice Watson sop BBC Singers; BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Yan Pascal Tortelier 

Chandos CHAN9341 (56‘ · DDD · T/t). Buy from Amazon

We are immediately struck, at the start of the Gloria, by the radiantly warm but clean orchestral sonority: only later does an uneasy suspicion arise that, apparently seduced by the sound, the recording engineers may be favouring it at the expense of the chorus, especially at orchestral fortes. But it’s committed and thoroughly secure choral singing, perhaps most easily appreciated in some of the unaccompanied passages – tender in the almost mystic ‘O quam tristis’ and firm-toned at ‘Fac ut ardeat’ (both in the Stabat mater); it gives real attack at ‘Quis est homo’ (just holding its own against the orchestra); the sopranos can produce a bright, ringing tone; and only the very first line of the ‘Stabat mater’, lying low in the basses, needed to be a bit stronger (as in most performances). Janice Watson is a sweet-voiced soloist with very pure intonation; but she could with advantage have strengthened her consonants throughout. 

Tortelier gives intensely felt readings of both works – the murmurous ending of the Stabat mater and the thrilling fortissimo chords at ‘Quoniam’ in the Gloria spring to mind – and fortunately he keeps the vocal ‘Domine Deus’ entry moving at the same pace as at its introduction. He takes the Stravinskian ‘Laudamus te’ fast and lightly; the only questionable speed is of ‘Quae moerebat’, which sounds too cheerful for the words (‘mourning and lamenting’). These are performances of undoubted quality.

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