This is an attractive Charpentier package, with Ivor Bolton and his London-based group coupling the composer’s best-known sacred piece with one of his most noble and beautiful. Both works are also available on a disc from William Christie and Les Arts Florissants – who are old hands at this kind of music of course – but Bolton’s version has plenty in its favour. Actually, the two discs are not quite the same; Christie offers some atmospheric but rather tiresome drumming at the beginning of the Te Deum and an extra 14 minutes of music in the shape of Charpentier’s Litanies de la Vierge (H83), while Bolton offers two liturgically motivated organ solos (one by a certain Francois Roberday, the other an improvisation by John Toll).
Like Christie, Bolton asigns the music’s numerous short vocal solos to members of the choir, most of whom acquit themselves pretty well, and indeed the overall standard of performance is high, showing more finish than Christie, particularly in the instrumental department. Christie, as is his wont, opts for a more dramatic and contrasted approach, compared to which Bolton’s musicians sound rather polite, and certainly if you were to put their correct but not entirely convincing French Latin against the more highly coloured delivery of Christie’s singers, you would have to say (even at some risk of sounding glibly predictable) that Bolton’s account is as unmistakably English as Christie’s is French. But if that seems like an automatic endorsement for Christie, then it is not meant to be; Bolton is a sensitive conductor with a thoroughly convincing sense of style, and he puts not a foot wrong in these gentle performances, which also receive the warmer of the two recordings. Choose according to taste.'