Vivaldi, as everyone knows, had the good fortune to be employed at one of Venice's four great girls' orphanages, the Ospedale della Pieta. It was for this institution that he composed almost all of his sacred vocal music and a good many of his concertos, the performance of which by ensembles made up entirely of young ladies helped to make the place such an eighteenth-century tourist attraction. For anyone today, however, who wishes to perform Vivaldi's sacred works as he himself might have done, it poses a bit of a problem: namely, how could an all-female orphanage have provided the forces to perform music apparently written for a mixed, SATB chorus? A number of solutions have been suggested—that male singers were drafted in, for instance—but no one knows what Vivaldi actually did. Andrew Parrott's new recording of the familiar Gloria and a clutch of other sacred works takes up another long-standing suggestion, which is that the notated tenor and bass parts were sung by women but transposed up an octave, thereby giving an SSAA choral texture. It's such a simple thing to do that it's a wonder no one has tried it out before, the choral texture does become a little congested in places (listen to the ''Et misericordia'' of the Magnificat for instance), but the orchestral accompaniment at least makes sure that there is a true bass. I confess to reservations, though, about the way in which the tenor line sometimes sticks out above the soprano like a descant: it's a much more angular part, and in the declamatory Laeta tus sum the fact that phrases rarely end with the root note on top undoubtedly takes away some of the music's sense of direction. Surely Vivaldi, even at his most cavalier, would not have taken so little account of the difference between the two types of texture. Perhaps the answer is to find women who can sing the tenor line at pitch and have only the bass part transposed up.
Parrott capitalizes on the reconstruction angle in this recording by dividing his programme up into little liturgical groups backed up by chant and instrumental 'church sonatas', so that the Gloria is prefaced by a plainsong Kyrie while the Vespers music of Laetatus sum and the Magnificat is suit ably augmented by chants for the hymn Ave maris stella and the antiphon Salve Regina. All the performances show their conductor's customary concern for beauty of choral sound, the women of the choir singing with well-sustained line and tonal blending and without shrillness, by comparison with which the soloists are maybe at times on the cold side, certainly always hard-edged (though given Virgin's choice of singers, this is presumably deliberate). Overall, I thought the performances could have had more energy, more rhythmic tightness, but there are undoubted successes: the final chorus of the Gloria is extremely well paced for instance, and the ''Fecit potentiam'' of the Magnificat is suitably fearsome.
Whatever the finer detail of musical and musicological interpretation, this disc should appeal to anyone with an inquisitive turn of mind. It's a fascinating and worthwhile experiment, a refreshing way to hear some pretty well-known music, and it cannot be denied that the sound-image it conjures of the Pieta is an evocative and plausible one. I do think, though, that it would have been fairer on potential buyers had Virgin mentioned the fact on the outside of the box that this version uses only female voices, rather than leaving people to find out after they get home. After all, it might not be what everyone is looking for.'