Somewhat to my astonishment, there are now more than two dozen recordings of Pergolesi’s Stabat mater (including treasurable performances by Emma Kirkby/James Bowman with Christopher Hogwood and Gillian Fisher/Michael Chance with Robert King), but only four for this admittedly much slighter Salve regina, though another four exist in its alternative key of C minor. So the only alternative disc for the two main works – the Sinfonia a tre (actually a cello sonata with continuo), containing an expressive Adagio and a finale purloined by Stravinsky, is but the little fill-up – is the very fine one listed above, though there the alto part is sung by a female voice (the excellent Nathalie Stutzmann). Gerard Lesne has nothing to fear by the comparison: with remarkably even production throughout his range from the lowest notes to the highest, his voice is more pleasing than Bowman’s, and his treatment of words (as at “O pia, O dulcis”) is sensitive and affecting. Intense orchestral playing (with a somewhat heavy bass-line) makes the utmost of the score’s bold harmonies and chromaticisms.
The beginning of the Stabat mater is all but identical to that of the Salve regina (the similarity heightened by being in the same key) and there is a comparable intensity of chromatic harmony and a rising sequence of emotional suspensions. The voices of Lesne and Veronique Gens – a team that has already provided several highly praised recordings – are well matched and balanced, though the reverberant acoustic of the Dominican convent in Paris (an appropriately ecclesiastical recording venue) clouds the clarity and purity of her voice and uncomfortably ‘catches’ some of her notes with unwanted emphases. The clearest movements are “Inflammatus et accensus” and the following “Quando corpus morietur”. Lesne handles the ornate “Quae moerebat” with ease, but the jaunty pace he adopts is strangely at variance with the sense of the words. All his tempos, indeed, are decidedly brisk. But altogether these are performances well worthy of attention, even if they do not displace their rival recordings in our affections. '