Monteverdi Vespro della Beata Vergine Pygmalion/Raphaël Pichon Harmonia Mundi HMM902710.11 102:00 mins (2 discs)
This is an attractive addition to the vast array of recordings of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers collection. However, like the others it has to face three rather troublesome issues. First, do the individual items make up an artistic whole? Pichon thinks the answer is ‘yes’ and so the style of performance – as with many by those of the same mind – tends to be a little too homogenous. For example, the undoubtedly early psalm setting Nisi Dominus for double choir probably deserves a somewhat ‘monumental’ demeanour in the manner of settings by Giovanni Gabrieli or Gastoldi, rather than the hurried and ‘light’ approach here more obviously appropriate to the later psalm setting Laudate pueri. Again, the lovely tenor solo, Nigra sum, is obviously in the new style of decorated monody established by Caccini c1600, but Emiliano Toro’s assured performance adds almost no ornamentation anywhere.
Next there is the liturgical question. This is not an attempt to include all the trappings of a Vespers service. There are no plainsongs to follow the psalms for example, though there is a 1627 setting by Monteverdi of the antiphon Sancta Maria succurre miseris inserted after Lauda Jerusalem. Finally the printed performance instructions still leave some choices for the performers, and the decisions are judicious. Pinchon does eschew the accepted convention of transposing down (suggested by the clefs) the Lauda Jeruslaem and the Magnificat, on the grounds that he wants for aesthetic reasons a brighter, more lyrical sound. That seems fine.
Anthony Pryer