This disc, recorded back in 1999, would appear more enterprising to us today if Lili Boulanger’s choral works were not so well represented by at least three different recordings, starting with the classic Markevitch disc on Everest (supervised by the composer’s famous sister Nadia), and continuing on to fine efforts from Timpani and Chandos. The music itself is lovely, late-Romantic stuff. Psaume 24 bears an uncanny resemblance in its enthusiasm and brevity to Holst’s Short Festival Te Deum. The Vieille Prière bouddhique sounds aptly exotic, and the major work, the ambitious and brooding Du fond de l’abime (Psaume 130), really would have worked best coupled with something like Florent Schmitt’s Psaume 150 (which badly needs a new recording). Gardiner generally plays all of this music more slowly than the competition, and while he’s typically accurate, the swifter alternatives remain preferable on account of their greater vitality and sense of flow. Part of the problem stems from the small size of the Monteverdi Choir, which sounds oddly unblended from section to section(the altos particularly), no doubt the result of being artificially boosted at the mixing board so as to stand out better against the full orchestra.
The performance of Symphony of Psalms is a good one, much better in fact than Pierre Boulez’s recent rendition for this same label. Here, Gardiner’s habitual coolness is arguably more idiomatic, and the orchestration supports the use of smaller vocal forces with less strain. Gardiner generates considerable energy through use of a slight accelerando as the first movement progresses and sustains the closing pages impressively. But although he has the finer singers, he doesn’t surpass Robert Craft’s keenly detailed recent vision of the piece (with an amazingly phrased and balanced second-movement fugue), or Ancerl’s orchestral and choral splendor in what remains arguably the finest recording of the work overall. DG’s recording, as noted above, tends to spotlight the chorus and in this work also various wind instruments, the clicking of oboe keys throughout being especially irritating. Five years ago, I might have been more enthusiastic about this release; as it stands, it’s already yesterday’s news.
