COMPOSERS: Monteverdi
LABELS: Archiv
ALBUM TITLE: Monteverdi
WORKS: Vespero della Beata Vergine
PERFORMER: Gabrieli Consort and Players/ Paul McCreesh
CATALOGUE NO: 477 6147
Recordings of Monteverdi’s 1610
setting of the Vespers fall into three
basic types. The first ignores the
fact that these pieces were printed
three years before Monteverdi ever
went to Venice, and concentrates on
beefed-up concert performances as if
to reflect the grandiloquent acoustic
of St Mark’s. Chief among them
is the 1990 version by John Eliot
Gardiner (Deutsche Grammophon)
– great fun, and musical, but some
of the stylistic and textural detail
is swamped by bombast. Second,
we have those concert versions that
attempt a scale more in keeping
with Monteverdi’s, with one voice
to a part, original instruments and
perhaps with an added chant or
two to indicate its connection with
the church. Philip Pickett’s 1990
recording (L’Oiseau-Lyre) was a
terrific example of this type, stylish
and dancing, but now sadly deleted.
Then there is the most neglected
category – and the one where this
new and impressive version from Paul
McCreesh really makes an impact
– liturgical reconstruction.
McCreesh gives us a compelling
attempt to place Monteverdi’s
settings of the five psalms, the hymn
and the Magnificat appropriately
amongst the plainsongs and
incidental music of a Vespers service.
This is not the first attempt to do
this: the approach owes much to
the pioneering 1984 recording by
Andrew Parrott (now on Virgin
Veritas), which also interpolated
instrumental works by Paolo Cima
and others between the movements,
transposed Lauda Jerusalem and the
seven-voiced Magnificat downwards,
and disrupted the printed order
of movements by placing Duo
Seraphim and the Sonata Sopra Santa
Maria at the end of the work. The
result in both cases is an experience
that ends with movingly quiet
reverence rather than the jubilant
blast of a ‘concert’ Magnificat.
There are, though, some extra
rewards in McCreesh’s version. First,
the instrumental playing is superbly
effective in the big choral pieces.
Second, there is an attempt to take on
board recent scholarship concerning
the speed relations between sections,
especially in the Sonata sopra Santa
Maria. In fact some movements,
such as the Laetatus sum and the
Fecit section of the Magnificat
are thrillingly fast-paced, which creates an immediacy lacking in
Parrott’s version. Third, the singing
is generally good and, in the solos
sung by Charles Daniels, among
the best you are likely to hear in this
repertory. Finally, the performers
sound as if they understand the
Latin words, which results in
some marvellously fresh phrasing
in Nisi Dominus and elsewhere.
The alert rhythms and the good
recording standards (in spite of a
few blemishes and some ‘spongy’
moments in the bass line) put it
ahead of Parrott’s otherwise superb
liturgical construction or Junghänel’s
for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi. The
reconstructions of Vesper services
by Harry Christophers (Hyperion)
and Jordi Savall (Astrée) are less
convincing liturgically and musically.