This new issue from Telarc couples two of the most popular baroque choral works, Vivaldi's Gloria (RV589) and Bach's Magnificat in D major. The performances are about as far away as you could imagine from current ideas about how to interpret baroque music. Here we have a large choir and orchestra, or so it sounds, some slowish tempos, modern instruments, long drawn-out crescendos and so forth; but, to be fair, issues of style are not entirely overlooked and the solo vocalists have evidently given thought to the ornamentation of their music. Dawn Upshaw and Penelope Jensen put some attractive embellishments to good use in the ''Laudamus te'' of the Gloria and Upshaw's siciliano, ''Domine Deus'', is beautifully shaped and thoughtfully ornamented; and here she is affectingly partnered by a well-sustained and gentle oboe obbligato. On the other hand, I could not get along with the ponderous tempo chosen for the choral ''Et in terra pax'' it seemed interminable and laboured, with far too weighty continuo support. The remaining choral movements fare better, though I found the singing a little bland and ill-focused in the ''Domine Deus Agnus Dei''. The music in this movement is shared between chorus and mezzo-soprano solo sung here by Marietta Simpson. Her voice is pleasant-sounding and she, too, has thought about ornamentation, but her vibrato is a little too wide for me.
In the Bach Magnificat Robert Shaw favours relaxed tempos, but whilst by and large they are effective, the woolly recorded sound renders the choral singing a good deal less radiant than I suspect it deserves to be; there is no brilliance surrounding the upper voice parts and no crisp edge to the instrumental parts either. The three soloists of the Gloria are joined by David Gordon and William Stone. I enjoyed Stone's ''Quia fecit mihi magna'', but all the same felt it lacked robustness, though there was a welcome absence of bluster. Gordon has a light-sounding voice and his singing of ''Deposuit potentes'' is fluent and technically effortless. The strings provide particularly graceful support here, with effectively shaped phrases. As middle of the road performances of these two works go, they come out fairly well and I much prefer the Vivaldi Gloria to that by Claudio Scimone and I Solisti Veneti on Erato (12/88), for instance. The problem for my ears is the recorded sound which just does not do justice either to chorus or orchestra. Some of the problems are cured if you listen at a high enough level but most of us, I suspect, neither can nor especially wish to do so. On balance, the Vivaldi fares better than the Bach both from performance and recording standpoints, yet while few will be disappointed by the two sopranos, a more convincing account of the Gloria is given by Vittorio Negri, the John Alldis Choir and the English Chamber Orchestra on a mid-price Philips CD (5/88). Finer overall performances of the Magnificat certainly exist elsewhere in the catalogue.'