As Peter Sellers famously said, ‘if you breathe a word around Charing Cross Road, ten fellas have done it before you’ve got out of your front door.’ A good idea got out one sultry summer afternoon on the Cam. Whether coincidence or indiscretion, two Cambridge colleges a spitting distance apart decided to record Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s complete Cantiones Sacrae, hitherto a stranger to the catalogue. Both were recorded in January and March 1998. Am I missing a trick here? If the music in Sweelinck’s 1619 set of five-part motets was not such an impressive feat, the duplication would be distinctly unfortunate. As it is, in one fell swoop we are spoilt for choice in a series of pieces which are as eminently pleasurable for their direct and sonorous disposition as for the sensitivity of text setting. Mildly frustrating is the fact that both versions come from the same stable: two similarly-constituted mixed choirs with several intrinsic qualities in common. In the more intimate and introspective works like ‘Vide homo’, one occasionally longs for a tightly-wrought specialist consort like Cantus Colln or Weser-Renaissance, who could squeeze more out of the highly-charged musical line and restore a sense of domestic devotion for which much of this music was surely intended. Yet, as Clare College has successfully realized in its rendering, Sweelinck also delights in exultation of a sort which bright and agile young British voices can irradiate like no others.
This new version from Trinity is both supremely polished and elegantly shaped, the lines unfolding with purity of tone and a minimum of fuss; the radiant Byrd-like logic of ‘Ab Oriente’ is mesmerizingly and patiently constructed. So, too, the fragrant ‘Tanto tempore’ or the concentrated ‘Te deum laudamus’, where the precise placement of consonants gives this truly omniscient text an irresistible nobility. There is also a vein of unquestioning poise in the way Richard Marlow enables his singers, especially his sopranos, to waft with a measured, ethereal and beguiling beauty, as in ‘In illo tempore’ (of which there are textural similarities to Monteverdi’s Mass setting); this is certainly a stylistic hallmark of this new set, enhanced by the discreet yet embracing continuo organ. Less convincing is the attention accorded to the more searching texts, where affecting appoggiatura figures or madrigalian shifts of mood fail to transport the listener beyond a rather sweet, objective vista; much of this comes down to an inadequate commitment to the dramatic elements, declamatory diction and an unwillingness to take a little more time, and also – to put it bluntly – to ‘go for broke’. The parameters of representation in ‘De profundis’ are narrower here than in Clare’s recording which, despite less manicured dynamics and coloration, seems more consistently red-blooded (assisted by the far more suitable lower, ‘profounder’ pitch here) and less inclined to fuel ‘stock’ politesse.
Both these Cambridge recordings are quintessential Oxbridge in their focused delivery, balance and balletic sparkle (‘Venite exultemus’ is marvellous in both), but neither consistently engages in the inward and contemplative elements of works like ‘O Domine Jesu Christe’, where sustained intensity of line – true emotional engagement – is so much part of the aesthetic. For some, Trinity will probably win the day for precision (excepting a few unrhythmic edit-points) and control, though Clare springs a few more musical surprises and generally exudes a more spontaneous and grounded expressive range. Each can share the honours of an important recording landmark.'