Three other great recordings
Hervé Niquet (conductor)
The Pietà’s foundling musicians attracted an elite audience from across Europe. Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel imagine how their performance of Vivaldi’s Gloria might have sounded in the Ospedale’s chapel. The omission of trumpet parts is wholly offset by the light blend of all-female voices, six unison altos in the solo movements and a heady combination of continuo instruments. Recorded in 2015, Niquet’s experiment, with its brisk tempos and rhythmic vitality, magnifies the music’s radiant beauty. (Alpha Classics ALPHA 620)
David Willcocks (conductor)
Originally released on the Argo label, David Willcocks’s 1966 recording is much more than a curiosity from the days before historically informed performers fully colonised Baroque territory. The rich sound of his King’s College choral scholars marries well with that of the choir’s boy choristers, especially in the ‘Qui tollis’ and closing fugue, and complements ace playing from the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Best of all are Janet Baker’s peerless performance of ‘Domine Deus, Agnus
Dei’ and the choir’s haunting ‘Et in terra pax’. (Decca 458 6232)
Harry Christophers (conductor)
In this 2018 release, Harry Christophers takes an unhurried, delightfully lyrical approach. The Sixteen’s singers and period instrumentalists let the music flow while mining copious details of articulation and colour: listen, for instance, to the ‘Domine fili’ for an introduction to the ensemble’s sympathetic interdependence, or the delightful interaction between Lynda Russell, oboist Sophia Mckenna and the organ-and-theorbo continuo combo of Laurence Cummings and Robin Jeffrey. (Coro COR 16162)
And one to avoid…
It is surprising that Hermann Scherchen, who so often produced persuasive insights into Baroque music, should have produced this turkey. The German conductor’s 1963 live performance with the Choir and Orchestra of RAI Milan is scuppered by submerged recorded sound, a turgid ‘Et in terra pax’ and ditch-dull ‘Laudamus te’, and what today could fairly be called inappropriate choral singing. Compensation comes in the shape of Anna Reynolds’s ‘Domine Deus, Agnus Dei’, although too little and too late.