Engineer and producer Laurence Heym launches her own label, Eloquentia, with the popular pairing of Pergolesi’s Stabat mater and Salve regina. The trump card here is La Cappella de’ Turchini, a Naples-based group of Baroque specialists with a pedigree in Neapolitan 18th-century music. The ensemble’s cultivated playing, Antonio Florio’s unaffected direction and Pergolesi’s music are tailor-made for each other. Suspensions and resolutions are meticulously controlled and only rarely seem over-deliberate. The faster music is amiable and sunny. ‘Quando corpus’ almost grinds to a halt, with an emotionally breathtaking sense that time is standing still. Maria Grazia Schiavo and Stéphanie d’Oustrac provide graceful solos and heartfelt duet singing, although sometimes their intonations do not quite match when trilling together.

This innately Italianate chamber-style performance is comparable to Alessandrini’s fine version on Naïve (4/99R), although Alessandrini’s firmer sense of inner drama and emotive soloists provide a more vivid experience than Florio’s gracious humility. A substantial Salve regina by Neapolitan composer Nicola Porpora receives its premiere recording. Florio directs in lively, articulate fashion, with the typically Neapolitan throbbing bass never outstaying its perpetually pulsing welcome. Stéphanie d’Oustrac navigates the fiendish virtuoso vocal writing without a hint of heavy weather.

Naxos provides yet another coupling of Pergolesi’s deathbed works. Helmut Müller-Brühl’s reverential pacing and absorbing textures plumb the serenity of the music (in comparison, the Italianate flow of Florio and drama of Alessandrini seem improperly secular), but at times it seems like an overly romanticised picture. ‘Cujus animam gementem’ cries out for more passionate verve, although it is hard to imagine male soprano Jörg Waschinski being comfortable with a more animated approach. Waschinski’s squeezed timbre is more secure than it initially seems; his ‘Vidit suum dulcem natum’ is lovely (though a shade pedestrian). Michael Chance sings with his customary erudition (his contribution to ‘Sancta mater’ is delectably graceful) but his admirers will prefer his earlier recording with Gillian Fisher and The King’s Consort (Hyperion, 11/88).