The first half of this programme by The Sixteen (actually singing at a basic strength of 20 voices) consists of religious pieces, of which by far the most substantial is the Mass, but all readily available in other recordings; the second half is secular and, except for the Chanson a boire (written for the Harvard Glee Club but, ironically, barred from performance because of Prohibition, then in force), made up of pieces that do not otherwise figure in the current catalogue. As a bridge between the two, as it were, is the very beautiful Un soir de neige, secular in textual content but spiritual in concept, written in Occupied France in the last Christmas of the war, and deeply expressive. For me this is the highlight of the present disc, also exemplifying The Sixteen's many virtues—firm, clearly focused and well-varied tone, sensitive nuances and phrasing, impeccable intonation and chording even in Poulenc's most testing chromatic harmonic progressions, admirably judged balance (only in the final outburst of ''Luire'', the last of the surrealist Seven songs, is the bass line in thirds insufficient) and verbal commitment.
In a thoughtful note, Roger Nichols argues that Poulenc's religious faith, to which he returned in the mid-1930s after the death of his father, led him to make no distinction between sacred and secular styles, ''since all things come from God and will in the end return to Him''. The acoustics of The Maltings, Snape are less accommodating to this view. The first half of the programme is satisfyingly warm and rich, though in places the singers appear to have been misled into forcing the tone—the fortissimos of the properly jubilant Exultate Deo are only just containable; but later, over-emphasis clouds the establishment of the tonality at the start of the Chanson a boire, and in the unpretentious folk-song settings of the Chansons francaises, where the words are of vital importance, hall resonance undermines clarity, and as a result numerous verses become merely repetitious. A word of praise, incidentally, for the excellent translations of these texts.'