This is a welcome issue on two counts. First, the performances are in the hands of a director who well understands the specialized and delicate requirements of French baroque style. Secondly, Mondonville is a composer who features all too seldom in these pages. Like two of his gifted compatriots of the previous century, Bouzignac and Moulinie, and like Campra whose life spanned both centuries, Mondonville came from the south of France. He was a generation younger than Rameau with whom the latter was to be compared unfavourably, at least in the field of the grand motet. As well as some 17 of these Mondonville composed operas, ballets and chamber music, a small amount of which included a vocal element. Some reckoned him a greater composer than Rameau. I do not but, at the same time, find very much more of merit and charm in his music than some commentators have done. This new release contains two of Mondonville's grand motets as well as three petits motets for solo voice and instrumental accompaniment. All five works are based on Psalm texts and, in the case of the grand motets, two are set complete, Venite, exultemus and De Profundis. The two works between them provide a wide spectrum of Mondonville's affective range; the Venite (Psalm 94) is a brightly coloured and supple piece requiring enormous virtuosity from the haute-contre (high tenor) soloist, and a fairly wide tessitura from the soprano. It opens with a joyful solo and chorus whose jaunty instrumental accompaniment would certainly not be out of place in the opera house. The ''Quoniam ipsius est mare'' for bass solo is an enchanting movement with such a captivating opening section that I wish it were in da capo mould. Soloists, choir and instrumentalists are all on strong form though occasional weaknesses show up in passages where Mondonville is, one might say, almost excessively demanding. Charles Daniels gives a brilliant account of the ''probaverunt, et viderunt opera mei'' (''proved me, and saw my works'') of his first Recit. 'Proved' indeed: Mondonville sees to that in a merciless sequence of coloratura gestures. The choir, too, are tested severely in the vigorous closing chorus.
The De Profundis (Psalm 129) as we should expect, is a more sombre work and it is more chorally orientated. Like the Venite, exulteraus, this piece was popular amongst Parisian concert-goers of the 1740s and 1750s. The reasons are not hard to find, for although the format was an old one—Lully's Miserere, had been composed some 80 years earlier than Mondonville's grands motets—the music is both inventive and at once pleasing to the sensibilities. Edward Higginbottom unfallingly conveys its freshness and its many tenderly expressive passages and has chosen soloists who sound much in sympathy both with him and the repertoire. As I have said, there are small technical weaknesses in the singing and playing I was disappointed by the undernourished timbre of the solo violin, for instance, in Regina terrae—but such instances as these are very much a minor consideration when assessing the merit of the performances as a whole. Higginbottom has made out a strong case for Mondonville and I am already eager for more. I would not swap any of this for Rameau's In convertendo but the music provides us with a fuller picture of the mid-eighteenth century French grand motet than we have so far been able to enjoy. May I make a plea for some Delalande and Campra?
Clear, though, somewhat distant recorded sound at a low level. Recommended.'