Few readers will be without at least one performance of Pergolesi's Stabat mater in their collection, and there are plenty to choose from at the moment. Only a few months ago I gave a warm welcome to a recording of the work by Gemma Bertagnolli and Sara Mingardo directed by Rinaldo Alessandrini. Now we have Barbara Bonney and Andreas Scholl, a pairing which at once confronts us with some early decision-making as to voice types. It seems likely, though we cannot be sure, that Pergolesi envisaged the piece for two solo women's voices, soprano and alto. But other possibilities work perfectly well and there is a recording with boy treble and countertenor as well as several with soprano and countertenor, such as this new one, currently available on the Gramophone Database.
Barbara Bonney and Andreas Scholl turn in technically accomplished and expressively refined performances. Their phrasing is sensitive and their voices are projected firmly but gracefully. Pergolesi's style is predominantly operatic, not only in its dramatic expression and leaning towards vocal display, but also in its orchestral writing. They are qualities to which these singers and players respond with animation and a just feeling for textual content. Yet there is an impression of an absence of close expressive or intellectual rapport between the two singers. I do not wish to do either of them any kind of injustice, but I sense a lack of real partnership and conjunction of ideas inthe performance.
This, of course, is not a problem in the two settings of the Salve regina, both of which, like the Stabat mater, were written in 1736 at the very end of Pergolesi's short life. The A minor work, lightly and lyrically sung by Bonney, is the less often heard of the two. The other, in F minor, is a variant for alto of a version in C minor for soprano. Scholl sings it with tonal and expressive warmth, bringing out nuances of word-painting here and there.
In summary, this is a disc that should make wide appeal, especially perhaps for the settings of the Salve regina. Where the Stabat mater is concerned my first preference remains the Bertagnolli/Mingardo partnership. It has a stronger stylistic unity and a more affecting expressive tension, if on occasion it is less tonally alluring than the newcomer.'