album reviews

CHOIR OF CLARE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE Haec dies: Music for Easter (Harmonia

Mundi) The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, has been maintaining consistently high quality since Graham Ross assumed its directorship in 2010. Its latest release is a smartly programmed collection of choral music relating to Easter, all of it of topmost caliber. The 21 tracks (just short of an hour and a quarter of music) span the centuries, including early-to-late Renaissance motets by the obscure Jean L’Héretier as well as more famous figures like Taverner, Lassus, Palestrina, and Byrd; appealing — and sometimes downright sumptuous — items from the 19th and early 20th centuries by Samuel Wesley, Charles Villiers Stanford, and Vaughan Williams; and right on up to a brand-new piece the choir commissioned from Matthew Martin, a vigorous, exuberant, yet ultimately enigmatic setting of the Easter text “Haec dies.” Timbres and textures are carefully balanced, and the program is captured in a vivid but not overly reverberant acoustic. (The obviously expert “sessions producer, recording engineer, and editor” is John Rutter, much admired as a choral composer— and as one of Ross’ predecessors as director at Clare.) Elegantly rendered selections of Easter plainchant weave through the recital, including the supremely beautiful Easter sequence “Victimae paschali laudes.” It’s hard to name favorites in this collection, but listeners will doubtless hit the replay button after Byrd’s jubilant six- part “Haec dies” and Lassus’ spacious, polychoral “Aurora lucis rutilat.” — James M. Keller

L’ESCADRON VOLANT DE LA REINE Notturno (Evidence)

L’Escadron Volant de la Reine (The Queen’s Flying Squadron) sounds like a World War I aerial regiment, but it was actually a group of lovely ladies-in-waiting who entertained and assuaged diplomats visiting the court of the 16th-century French queen Catherine de Médicis (and, some believe, extracted secrets from them). The name has been adopted by a crackerjack instrumental chamber ensemble founded in 2012 to explore overlooked Baroque music. In this inaugural CD, the group brings precision, assurance, and interpretative imagination to little-visited music from late-17th-century Naples. The playlist focuses on works written for Holy Week, settings of the Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah, works of somewhat mystical import that in each case begin with the declamation of a letter from the Hebrew alphabet: Aleph, Beth, Ghimel, Daleth, and so on. The vocal soloist in these settings is French soprano Eugénie Lefebvre, whose clear but unusual voice is earmarked by either a completely straight tone or flutter, with no gradation between: not unpleasant, but odd. Works by Cristofaro Caresana and Gaetano Veneziano will delight listeners who revel in that which is obscure, but the finest pieces on the disc are those by the more famous Alessandro Scarlatti, particularly a sinfonia for four- part string ensemble and (with the addition of theorbo and harpsichord) the highly dramatic sinfonia from his oratorio