DOCUMENTING RECENT CHORAL EXPLOSION

A perusal of any recent issue of the Schwann catalogue might lead one to the conclusion that record companies have perceived a growing demand for choral music among record buyers.

Why else would outfits as hard-nosed as Angel/EMI and London be, if not quite deluging us, then certainly showing unprecedented generosity with such relatively arcane matter as choral works by Haydn, Monteverdi, Faure and Poulenc?

Haydn’s “Lord Nelson” Mass (Argo/London compact disc 414 464) is performed by the London Symphony Chorus, which sings with admirable strength and cohesiveness, the City of London Sinfonia and a quartet of vocal soloists dominated by the soaring soprano of Barbara Bonney. The conductor--and, presumably, chorus master as well--is a gifted young Englishman named Richard Hickox who tellingly projects both the grandeur and intimate detailing of this noble and thrilling work.

The stupendous Monteverdi “Vespers of 1610” comes to us from that scholarly paragon among conductors, John Eliot Gardiner, via a 1974 recording not previously encountered by this listener in any other format (London 414 464, two compact discs).

This festive, indeed voluptuously operatic, edition--in contrast to another excellent recent version, under Andrew Parrott’s pristine direction for Angel/EMI--features Gardiner’s personally trained band of choral virtuosi: the Monteverdi Choir, the Salisbury Cathedral Boys Choir (Richard Seal, chorus master), a solo sextet featuring outstanding performances by tenor Philip Langridge and baritone John Shirley-Quirk, as well as the masterly period-instrument players of the English Baroque Soloists.

Both works are led with four-square rigidity, ably sung by the all-male Hymnuschor of Stuttgart (no choral director listed), with a solo quartet distinguished only for the stylish presence of baritone Tom Krause.

Faure’s radiant Requiem has received within recent months as many entries in the catalogue--all, astonishingly, available on compact disc--as it had in the preceding decade. One of them is, however, a CD reissue of a decade-old recording that now serves as part of an appealing Faure program (Erato ECD 88126).

Michel Corboz, one of Europe’s outstanding choral directors, leads this Swiss production in which he does not employ his own adult choristers from Lausanne but rather the all-male Maitrise Saint Pierre-aux-Liens de Bulle. With its boy sopranos and altos, the choir produces a seamless sound of ineffable purity. The choral director is Andre Corboz, a brother of the conductor, and the fine vocal soloists are boy soprano Alain Clement and baritone Philippe Huttenlocher. The orchestra is the Bern Symphony. The program also includes the spare, delicate and very attractive early “Messe Basse” and a curious makeweight, the “Elegie” for cello, brawnily played by Frederic Lodeon.

Faure’s Requiem is also well served by conductor Michel Plasson, his Toulouse Capitole Orchestra and a pair of high-powered soloists, soprano Barbara Hendricks and bass Jose van Dam (EMI/Angel DS-38252; CDC 47317, compact disc). But the celebrated Basque chorus, the Orfeon Donostiarra (Antxon Ayestaran, chorus master) proves rather rough-toned for music of such delicacy and refinement.

An earlier version of the Faure Requiem than the one to which we are accustomed is recorded for the first time--and magnificently--by the all-male Cambridge Singers, the City of London Sinfonia, an ethereal, utterly vibrato-less soprano named Caroline Ashton and a modestly endowed baritone, Stephen Varcoe, all under the direction of John Rutter. It’s on a tiny British label, Conifer (compact disc CDC 122).

Among the more obvious differences between this edition of 1893 and the familiar one of 1900 are the former’s smaller orchestra, resulting in a more natural balance with the (as heard here) small chorus, and an ecstatic, high-lying violin solo (played by Simon Standage) in the “Sanctus,” which in the later version is arguably less effective for being played by a battery of violins and in a downward transposition.

Faure’s lovely “Cantique de Jean Racine” is the fill-up, as it is for Plasson.

And, finally, the poignant “Stabat Mater” (1949) of Poulenc, a spiritual descendant of the Faure Requiem, is played by the French National Orchestra and sung with wonderfully suave sensuality by the Chorus of Radio France (Jacques Jouineau, chorus master), which is also heard in the darkly dramatic a cappella “Motets for a Time of Penitence” written a decade earlier (Angel/EMI DS-38107, standard disc only).

Georges Pretre conducts both works with the empathy born of long experience and an intimate association with the music, while Barbara Hendricks sings the soprano solos in “Stabat Mater” with an affecting combination of emotional intensity and purity of tone.