Duruflé • Poulenc

Duruflé: Requiem; Poulenc: Lenten Motets

The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge/stephen Layton Hyperion CDA68436 56:01 mins

The candles and incense are palpable. There have been plenty of recordings of Duruflé’s plainchant-inspired Requiem in its 1948 choir and organ incarnation, but few match this newcomer for vivid atmosphere. Captured in

Saint-eustache, Paris, the sizeable organ and vast spaces provide an unmistakably French hue for the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge conducted by Stephen Layton.

Sure enough, some details merge: but, like the mingling of colours in stained glass, that is the point, the recording wisely working with the haze. The choir is magnificent, emerging through former Trinity organ scholar Harrison Cole’s adroitly chosen organ textures in the Introit, yet producing searing radiance in the climax of the Sanctus. If not fully continental in expression, Anglican primness is left behind, with a reverent intensity permeating everything, whether the Kyrie’s calm exhortations or mezzosoprano’s Katherine Gregory’s richly burnished Pie Jesu.

It is a pity that the church’s ambience disappears so swiftly after the beatific last note of the In Paradisum, and a longer period of repose is needed before the impressively assured performance of Poulenc’s four Lenten motets.

The choir negotiates the challenges of Poulenc’s jumps between fervent supplication and contemplative sorrow with apparent ease. The opening cries of ‘Timor et tremor’ are bracingly full-throated, yet the disjunct lines of ‘Tenebrae factae sunt’ are controlled with crystalline beauty. Recorded in Trinity College Chapel in Cambridge, the more defined, yet still generously resonant acoustic suits the penitential spirit of these short masterpieces, completing a sublimely evocative disc. Christopher Dingle

PERFORMANCE

RECORDING