There is a celebratory atmosphere to this Vespers, recorded at a concert in the Royal Chapel at Versailles. And why not? As the booklet accidentally-almost reveals, it came four days after a similar concert in King’s College, Cambridge, which had marked the exact 50th anniversary of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s famous performance of it there on March 5, 1964 – the first-ever appearance of the Monteverdi Choir. Good reason for its conductor to be in a benign mood, then, and so indeed he appears, smiling at his singers and players, and oozing visible pleasure at their most beautiful contributions.

Gardiner has always liked his Vespers punchy, theatrical and without a hint of English churchiness. His 1989 recording in St Mark’s, Venice (also on DVD – Archiv, 5/03), perhaps showed us the extreme end of that approach, and while he has undoubtedly mellowed since then, the basic idea remains. A big breath for the solo singer between the very first two words of the opening Responsorium offers the earliest possible hint that this performance will be both expansive and indulgent, and sure enough the choir’s big moments – that opening, the ‘omnes’ intervention in the ‘Audi coelum’ and the close of the Magnificat – really are big. But it is not all about being grand; the virtuosity of Gardiner’s 30-strong choir allows him to shape the psalm movements like richly upholstered madrigals, chiselling out contrasts between very loud and very quiet, varying the pace at will and really pushing at the text (listen to the quickness with which they accelerate on the words ‘suscitans, suscitans’ in the ‘Laudate pueri’). There are also some wonderfully smooth moments (‘Ave maris stella’) and some drawn-out endings, and it is a mark of Gardiner’s experience with this piece that he can do all these and still maintain compelling momentum. There are exquisite solos too, especially from soprano Silvia Frigato and tenor Nicholas Mulroy.

This was originally a live TV broadcast, so the filming is truly in-the-moment (you can sometimes see musicians and cameramen on the move), but the simplicity of it brings an integrity to the whole that is not quite there in the 1989 DVD. And if the architecture of the Chapelle Royale seems a little massive even for Gardiner’s concept of this piece, the shot of its decorated ceiling while invisible tenors call to each other in the dizzying ‘Duo Seraphim’ is as moving and theatrical a moment as anything.