Lovers of Couperin’s three Lecons de Ténèbres are getting used to having a steadily increasing number of recordings to choose from. But these exquisitely pained settings of texts from Lamentations are the kind of masterpieces which can support a variety of interpretative approaches, and for which a few contrasting performances on the shelves can only be a good thing. The latest release instantly makes a niche for itself as one of the most extreme examples, offering unremittingly dramatic readings which take the music’s penitential fervour to the limit in a gamut of moody tempo changes, anguished lingerings, declamatory outbursts and dynamic contrasts. The result is less like sombre church music than a series of operatic episodes.

Anne Grimm is the more theatrical of the two singers, her voice hard and melodramatic compared to the purer-voiced Johannette Zomer, who is more in line with what we have come to expect in this music though she too pushes the volume level hard at times. But it is not just the singers who enter into this intense expressive world – the mood is often set by the continuo, where Mike Fentross releases the odd whiplash theorbo chord, and both he and gamba player Paulina van Laarhoven transfer the same style (not entirely appropriately, it has to be said) to their inserted solo items.

These are not performances that can really be allowed to represent these pieces on their own, though they can be enjoyed as a demonstration of a particular possible approach. For a more conventionally mellifluous account there is Theatre of Early Music (Daniel Taylor and Robin Blaze; BIS, 8/05), while Sophie Daneman and Patricia Petibon, representing Les Arts Florissants, offer a more sensual version (Erato, 7/97).