The Toronto-based Aradia Ensemble, under its director Kevin Mallon has already featured on an attractive disc of French music of the grand siecle under the title 'Ballet Music for the Sun King' (Naxos, 10/98). Now the group has turned its attention to Lully's contemporary, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, in a delightful sequence of vocal and instrumental Christmas music. The programme's leitmotiv, so-to-speak, is a set of seven traditional French Christmas carols, arranged for instrumental ensemble, woodwind and strings, by Charpentier. These are irregularly interspersed throughout the sequence, giving the programme a lightly cohesive shape. Other French composers of the period, notably Lalande, made similar arrangements, sometimes for solo organ, and they are charming for their structural simplicity and naivety of expression.
The remaining items are mainly lifted from Christmas pieces of greater substance. The opening carol comes from what is perhaps Charpentier's best-known work, the Midnight Mass, while four others are drawn from as many Christmas motets. Two further instrumentally treated carols belong to a different set from the other, and may have been associated with one of Charpentier's motets. The Aradia Ensemble has seen fit to adapt some of the pieces to suit its purpose, but such adaptations as there are respect the musical style and general intent of the composer. Texts have been added to some of the instrumental carols, and other instruments are sometimes added to Charpentier's typically modest scoring of recorders and strings. Such adjustments as these are not only tasteful but, in some measure, true to the custom of the time. All in all an enjoyable Christmas celebration executed with fervour and expressive warmth. Recommended.
Nicholas Anderson