Exsultate, Jubilate

This is a quite exceptional record and contains some of the best singing I have heard in years. The matching trills between Sylvia McNair and the orchestra towards the end of the Alleluia from Handel’s Silete venti have to be heard to be believed. As usual, Gardiner conducts the music with stylistic authority, vigour and finesse. It is an excellent combination. The recording was made in All Hallows, Gospel Oak, in London and is in an acoustically broad space, but has all the details of choir and soloist in place.

As the mysterious opening bars of the Kyrie gradually emerge into the light, we know that this recording of Mozart’s glorious Great Mass in C minor is a special one: the tempi perfect, the unfolding drama of the choral writing so carefully judged, and, above it all, the crystalline beauty of soloist Carolyn Sampson’s soprano, floating like a ministering angel. Masaaki Suzuki’s meticulous attention to detail, so rewarding in his remarkable Bach recordings, shines throughout this disc, the playing alert, the choir responsive, the soloists thrilling. And there is the bonus of an exhilarating Exsultate, Jubilate with Sampson on top form.

Those who have had the good fortune of hearing live performances as conducted by Bernard Labadie with his usual ensembles Les Violons du Roy and La Chappelle de Québec will understand why this radiant recording is so special. Labadie is an authentic period devotee and his intensive scholarship and gifts as a conductor pull us back in time to the purity of sound surrounding these compositions.

Karine Deshayes, one of today's most remarkable interpreters of Mozart together with the vocal and instrumental ensemble Les Paladins, gives an outstanding performance in this program of his sacred and secular works, in which the motet Exsultate, jubilate! Forms the centrepiece. Her rich, full-bodied voice taps directly into the roots of this highly virtuosic piece, originally written for a powerful, resonant soprano castrato tessitura. Conducted by Jérôme Corréas, the musicians complete the program with a selection of early pieces by Mozart: several of his (unjustly underrated) Church Sonatas, his Symphony No. 17, a poetic Agnus Dei from the Vespers, and excerpts from the all too rarely heard Davide penintente and La Betulia liberata. Through his attention to contrast and his concern for expressivity, the conductor reveals the underlying theatricality of these works, unparalleled in their dramatic power.

These performances of the three most popular examples of Mozart's youthful sacred music represent a golden age of The English Concert - a period-instrument ensemble founded by harpsichordist and conductor Trevor Pinnock in 1973. They excelled in blowing away the cobwebs from fascinating repertoire from Purcell to Haydn during their fruitful years of collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv label. This album also features a choir that is a veritable Who's Who of the booming British early music choral scene in the early 1990s.

Blegen’s technically flawless and musically peerless rendition (Exsultate, jubilate) is a pure celebration of beautiful singing and of the wonder of Mozart’s dazzling masterpiece. The sound is as clear and immediate as if it had been recorded yesterday, and Pinchas Zukerman’s direction is exemplary. Not so exemplary is this version of the Mozart/Süssmayr Requiem, although it certainly is one of the sturdier and more durable performances on disc (and the quartet of soloists is unsurpassed).

La discographie de la musique religieuse de Mozart est dominée par la "Grande messe en ut mineur " et le "Requiem" au point de nous priver d'authentiques chefs-d'oeuvre, dont cette quatrième messe connue sous le nom de "Messe de l'orphelinat" ("Missa Solemnis" KV 139) …