La Chapelle Royale de Versailles, Koopman

Naji Hakim has established himself as a performer and composer whose works are indelibly tied to his Christian faith. Recognised with a papal medal for his activities, these pieces are drawn from the span of his compositional career, combining organ music with string quartet and solo soprano. This is Signum’s 3rd disc with Naji Hakim, following solo organ discs from Glenalmond college and the van den Heuvel organ of the Danish Radio Theatre.

Conductors coming to the Fauré Requiem have choices: The original, 1888 version with only five movements of the eventual seven and very minimal instrumentation; the more commonly performed 1893 chamber version, scored with only the lower strings (violins reserved for the In Paridisum movement), plus harp, timpani, organ, horns, and trumpets, but without woodwinds; and the 1900 revision for full orchestra. Philippe Herreweghe recorded the 1893 version several years ago; here he opts for the full-orchestra setting. But there’s a nice hitch: it’s played on period instruments and uses a harmonium instead of an organ. It comes across as much leaner than other recorded “full” versions (i.e., Chung’s on DG, Dutoit’s on Decca), and indeed the details of the “big” score are nice to hear.

Ce CD fait découvrir trois motets à grand choeur du compositeur méridionnal Antoine-Esprit Blanchard, dont deux en première mondiale. Ces grandes pièces, tout à la fois empreintes de noblesse et de théâtralité, alternant faste des chœurs et intimité des récits, donnent un aperçu fidèle de la musique pratiquée et appréciée à la chapelle de Louis XV, dans la tradition du grand motet français instaurée par Louis XIV.

“What seems to me to be Mendelssohn’s principal quality is his crystalline clarity. (…) It makes him one of the great composers of religious music. In the direct line of the great predecessors he admired so much, it made it possible for him to efface himself before the divine word and to set it to music with all necessary humility. This is what constitutes the force of the music on this recording.” – Philippe Herreweghe

The Tenebrae Responsories have been recorded three times before; once by a full choir, once by solo voices and, most recently and successfully, by The Tallis Scholars directed by Peter Phillips on Gimell. Like Phillips, Philippe Herreweghe uses a medium-sized ensemble, producing a rich and sonorous tone, but despite that is still able to achieve a clean and clear overall sound with an attractively luminous quality in the upper voices. The performances of these pieces, and of the four motets which round off the Gesualdo sequence, are characterized by a firm sense of their architecture (or at least of an architecture since the composer's block technique often confounds symmetry), and by sensitive attention to details of attack and articulation particularly in the more dissonant moments.

This really was quite a fine recording of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, one of the best in years and easily the best of the early music recordings. The Choeur de la Chapelle Royale et du Collegium Vocale sing with strength and stamina, but also with grace and beauty of tone. The Champs Elysees Orchestra plays with power and precision, but also with unity of ensemble and beauty of tone, a very rare quality in an early music orchestra. And Herreweghe himself is actually an apt interpreter of the work. Not only does he have a knack for bringing out better than the best in his performers, but he actually seems to believe in the spiritual and sublime essence of the work, a very, very rare quality in any conductor these days.

Recorded in 1987, this disc by Belgian conductor Philippe Herreweghe and the choral-instrumental ensemble La Chapelle Royale came in advance of most of the historical-performance recordings that have delved deeply into Bach's cantatas and their world. It was, in fact, the first digital recording of the Trauerode, BWV 198. Despite some competition, this remains an exemplary Bach performance, and it was a superb candidate for reissue in Harmonia Mundi's HM Gold greatest-hits series.

Hans Leo Hassler was roughly contemporary with Palestrina and wrote in a similarly transparent style. Though he was Lutheran, he set numerous Latin texts, including the Mass. " Missa super Dixit Maria is a "parody" based on Hassler's famous motet Dixit Maria ad angelum. That motet isn't included here, unfortunately, but you can clearly hear its themes recurring in the various Mass movements. The motets on this disc include several penitential items with a striking chromaticism Palestrina wouldn't have touched. Vater unser, a setting of Luther's versification of the Lord's Prayer, seems dull in this company.

The Magnificat was the very first work Bach composed after his appointment as Cantor of St. Thomas's School in Leipzig in 1723. We can imagine the care he lavished on the work that was to establish him in this new function. It was revised some years later: the key was changed to D major and the forces were considerably enlarged. This is the version in which one of Bach's most famous choral works has come down to us.