South-West German Radio’s ‘country’ series continues with a varied selection of late 19th- and 20th-century Italian choral music. Given the dominance of opera in Italian musical life, the pool of repertory available to chamber choirs is quite limited. However, these recordings – made over nine years and in a variety of acoustics – offer as good a survey as one might hope for, and exhibit impeccable singing of total passion, veering from the esoteric to the sublime (with some dubious rubbish thrown in).

Verdi’s late a cappella pieces make a welcome contrast to the avant-garde offerings of Giacinto Scelsi and Luigi Nono. The latter’s Sarà dolce tacere for eight soloists is extremely taxing for singer and listener alike. Soprano notes are plucked from the stratosphere, chords are clustered and broken up as some kind of vocal purgative. Scelsi’s Yliam is even more provocative, relying heavily on extended vocal techniques. His TKRDG for six male voices, electric guitar and percussion has novelty value but little else.

It comes as something of a relief to sit back and enjoy Pizzetti’s glowing Three Choral Compositions of 1943, which form the central backbone of this programme. The third, ‘Recordare, Domine’, is the longest and most powerful. Bizarrely, there are shades of Britten (the Hymn to St Cecilia, which – of course – would have been unknown to Pizzetti). Unfortunately the Verdi and Pizzetti tracks suffer from some low frequency heterodyne groaning, presumably from the conductor. This is especially distracting and annoying in the ladies-only Laudi alla Vergine Maria. South-West German Radio’s ‘country’ series continues with a varied selection of late 19th- and 20th-century Italian choral music. Given the dominance of opera in Italian musical life, the pool of repertory available to chamber choirs is quite limited. However, these recordings – made over nine years and in a variety of acoustics – offer as good a survey as one might hope for, and exhibit impeccable singing of total passion, veering from the esoteric to the sublime (with some dubious rubbish thrown in).

Verdi’s late a cappella pieces make a welcome contrast to the avant-garde offerings of Giacinto Scelsi and Luigi Nono. The latter’s Sarà dolce tacere for eight soloists is extremely taxing for singer and listener alike. Soprano notes are plucked from the stratosphere, chords are clustered and broken up as some kind of vocal purgative. Scelsi’s Yliam is even more provocative, relying heavily on extended vocal techniques. His TKRDG for six male voices, electric guitar and percussion has novelty value but little else.

It comes as something of a relief to sit back and enjoy Pizzetti’s glowing Three Choral Compositions of 1943, which form the central backbone of this programme. The third, ‘Recordare, Domine’, is the longest and most powerful. Bizarrely, there are shades of Britten (the Hymn to St Cecilia, which – of course – would have been unknown to Pizzetti). Unfortunately the Verdi and Pizzetti tracks suffer from some low frequency heterodyne groaning, presumably from the conductor. This is especially distracting and annoying in the ladies-only Laudi alla Vergine Maria.