Poulenc as a spiritual composer? To those that know the colorful orchestral works, the worldly songs and the ebullient chamber items, it may be a troublesome thought to get used to. Talking of his sacred music, although, Poulenc stated ‘I believe I’ve put the very best and most real a part of myself into it’, and the Catholic ethos of the composer’s childhood grew to become more and more vital as he received older and suffered life’s buffetings – his ‘peasant devotion’, he referred to as it, ‘distinctive and hereditary in me’.
Into this context match the Quatre Motets pour le Temps de Noël (4 Christmas Motets), a setting of Latin texts accomplished in 1952, when Poulenc was 53. The nativity scene, the shepherds, and the Sensible Males’s arrival are depicted in three meditative actions. The fourth explodes with pleasure – ‘Christ is born immediately!’ – recalling Poulenc’s early years as Parisian boulevardier and celebration animal.
One of the best recordings of Poulenc’s 4 Christmas Motets
George Visitor (conductor)
Choir of St John’s School, Cambridge (1988)
Chandos CHAN 10448 X
IN HIS 40 YEARS as director of music at St John’s School, Cambridge, George Visitor constructed a formidable choir of boy choristers and male undergraduates. He had a specific affinity for French repertoire, and it’s no shock his recording of Poulenc’s Christmas Motets is so vividly profitable.
Even within the hushed opening of ‘O magnum mysterium’, which might appear flat and sleepy, Visitor is already conjuring environment, the delicate dynamic inflections of the decrease voices sharpening expectations. The treble entry, when it comes, is pure and silvery, and the tenors match it at ‘Beata virgo’, which rises up gleaming and supple from the choral textures.
Visitor’s knowledgeable balancing of the 4 voice-parts reveals extra of the element in Poulenc’s usually tart, stunning harmonisations than in any competing model. The awkward side-steps on ‘aurum, thus et myrrham’ (‘gold, frankincense and myrrh’) in ‘Videntes stellam’, and once more on the conclusion, are pitch-perfectly tuned, and heighten the sense of strangeness Poulenc finds within the story of the Magi’s go to.
The nuanced account of ‘Hodie Christus natus est’ – usually an aggressive shout-fest – underlines the infectious alacrity Visitor brings to the music-making, and his capability to present the Latin phrases which means. It caps a splendidly heat, involving efficiency, ideally captured by the Chandos workforce.
Martin Neary (conductor)
Winchester Cathedral Choir (1987)
Warner Classics 972 1652
It says one thing for the technical management and focus the Winchester singers convey to bear that conductor Martin Neary can add a full minute to the usual three-minute timing for the opening ‘O magnum mysterium’, and never reap destructive penalties. Quite the opposite, it is a raptly sustained piece of singing, extra meditatively inclined and inward-looking than most rival variations. And whereas Neary’s vocal mixing is silkier and extra homogenised than Visitor’s, the Winchester choir continues to be able to reducing assaults when crucial – at ‘Dicite quidnam vidistis’ in ‘Quem vidistis pastores’, as an example, and in an ebullient ‘Hodie’.
Harry Christophers (conductor)
The Sixteen (1990)
Erato 562 4312
Of all of the variations sung by grownup voices, that is the one which will get closest to reaching the readability of texture and harmonic motion which distinguishes the St John’s School interpretation. That is partly to do with the excellently engineered recording, which, whereas permitting resonance, retains the person elements clearly targeted. However the technical excellence of The Sixteen is the actually telling issue. Their detailed responsiveness to conductor Harry Christophers’s delicate presentation of the music is rarely self-advertising, or purchased on the expense of apparent pressure or effort. The pointillistic precision on the opening of ‘Videntes stellam’ and the mix of nimbleness and dynamism in ‘Hodie’ are simply two highlights in a efficiency of excellent all-round accomplishment.
John Rutter (conductor)
The Cambridge Singers (2002)
Collegium CSCD506
Pitched someplace between the contemporary, youthful Oxbridge faculty sound and a totally grownup choir like The Sixteen are John Rutter’s mixed-voice Cambridge Singers. In Rutter’s fingers, ‘O magnum mysterium’ has a lissome, sensual high quality, the sopranos reaching a pure, crystalline tonal high quality which is especially alluring. Vibrato is stored to an absolute minimal, which implies that this is without doubt one of the best-tuned variations obtainable, and one of many few the place the hummed sections in ‘Quem vidistis pastores’ are greater than a bleary buzz within the background. Rutter’s ‘Hodie Christus natus est’ can be among the finest there’s – rhythmically exact, but bursting with exuberance. A glowing efficiency of the Gloria provides additional enticement to this glorious Poulenc anthology.
Illustration: Steve Rawlings/Debut Artwork
