Miserere Meiby Allegri

This 1994 disc is something of a classic of the new strain of the historical-performance movement, which is characterized by a certain amount of license to speculate in the reconstruction of lost works. The Miserere mei Deus of Gregorio Allegri is, of course, not a lost work, but one with an unbroken performance tradition stretching back to its composition in the early seventeenth century (before 1638). It was sung for centuries at the Sistine Chapel, where the singers were enjoined from circulating the music beyond Vatican walls. That prohibition wasn't enough to stop the 12-year-old Mozart, who wrote most of it down by ear as a tourist in Rome and filled in the gaps on a quick return visit; soon after that, British music writer Charles Burney got hold of either Mozart's copy (which hasn't survived) or another one and published the work.

Allegri's early Baroque masterpiece Miserere from around 1630 movingly juxtaposes modal chant with tonality, and was so popular that the Vatican refused to allow it to be performed anywhere else - until the 14 year old Mozart broke the Vatican's monopoly by writing it down from memory after attending a performance. Pergolesi's late Baroque masterpiece Stabat Mater for soprano and alto dates from 1736, the year of his death at the age of 26. It was originally written for male voices but since it's hard to find a castrato these days, it's generally performed by two women or by a female soprano and counter-tenor. This performance uses a female alto but in other respects it's very much a period performance - the sound is intimate and the tempos are lively without any sacrifice of spiritual depth.

The 1980 recording that not only made the Tallis Scholars a household name, but effectively led the way to today's great wave of exceptional mixed-voice choirs. Alison Stamp is faultless in the exceptionally testing soprano solo - top Cs and all - while, with the choir and solo quartet placed some distance apart, the perfect acoustic of Merton College Chapel is captured to perfection by Gimell.

This is a very different musical interpretation of Psalm 51 than we saw last week in Allegri’s Miserere. In Allegri’s composition the intensity of the soaring, unaccompanied voices lead us to contemplation of the Divine Mercy of God in Heaven. Here the urgent, dramatic orchestration pulls us down into King David’s turbulent emotions as he comes to acknowledge his sinfulness and his need for God’s mercy. This clip is only the first part of a much longer composition, and contains only the first line of the Psalm: Miserere mei, Domine, secundam misericordiam tuam, “Have mercy on me, Lord, according to your compassion”. As the focus of the Psalm moves from David’s sinfulness to the abundance of God’s mercy, the music in the later parts of the piece changes with it.

As one goes along in their classical-music journey, you eventually start moving beyond the "safeness" of the major composers and exploring the lesser-known "minor" composers - and often discovering soon enough some of the "hidden treasures" of the classical repertoire. And among some of these treasures are the clarinet concertos and the featured quartets on this CD by the Finnish-born virtuoso/composer, Bernhard Crusell.

It is extremely difficult nowadays to reproduce the sound castrato singers where capable of doing at their time and, too often, one finds voices that are too nasal or merely good falsettos. But in many of the performances in this CD one can let the imagination wander and almost imagine you are in the 18th century. In particular, the performance of James Bowmann is outstanding. Also very special the performace of Charpentier 'Salve Regina' by Gerard Lesne and the others; this of course enhanced by the exquisite sensibility of the director Jordi Saval. Also, the duo of Derek Lee Ragin and Ewa Mallas-Godlewska in 'Son qual nave ch'agitata' is so exquisite it brings tears to your eyes.

These must be among the earliest of oboe quintets, either on or off record. They are also among the least familiar; but of course not at all necessarily among the least rewarding on that account. Most rewarding is the Crussel; and it is good to see such a long-neglected composer now at last coming into his own. A divertimento as such is far from unusual for wind; but this one, in a single continuous movement (with varied sections) certainly is. The sections add up to a normal balance of (roughly) quick-slow-quick, the slow particularly effective in its evocation of Mozart's favourite G minor laments by deserted sopranos (there is a difference, though: probably none of Mozart's sopranos ever played the oboe so well as this). Throughout Crusell, himself a wind-player, treates the oboe as leader, and throughout he writes the most elegant and varied of music.