Extending the Boundaries of Authenticity

The credibility that authentic (or “period” or “historically informed”) performance gains with each passing day is illustrated with unprecedented potency by John Eliot Gardiner’s recent appointment to the post of principal conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony.

Englishman Gardiner, 48, whose international reputation rests largely on his antiquarian activities, succeeds Gunter Wand, 80, a revered upholder of German tradition and the 19th-Century standard repertory.

As if to point up this anomaly and to affirm Gardiner’s beyond-Baroque interests, Philips has released his recording of music more likely to be identified with Wand--the “Deutsches Requiem” of Brahms (432 149)--but done Gardiner’s way.

The orchestra is the flossily named Orchestre Revolutionaire et Romantique--in fact an expanded version of Gardiner’s English Baroque Soloists ensemble--and the conductor’s own Monteverdi Choir, its name and the gorgeous clarity and fluidity of its singing intact.

Most important about this release of music first heard in 1868--stretching the chronological boundaries thus far determined for period instruments and historical performance practice--is that it refreshes the familiar score to an almost incredible degree without sounding eccentric.

Gardiner’s principal labor has been expended on tightening a score bloated by tradition. As it emerges here, rhythms are tauter and tempos faster than anything we have previously heard.

The result is far less gloomy and cud chewing than the usual “Deutsches Requiem,” one that focuses as much on Brahms’ implicit message of hope and peace as on the grimmer aspects of the terminal experience.

In his recording debut, baritone Rodney Gilfry (of Los Angeles Music Center Opera and points east) sings his solos with handsome tone and a gentle expressivity ideally suited to Gardiner’s--and, most likely, Brahms’--concept. The soprano, Charlotte Margiono, sings sweetly and accurately.

Gardiner is equally successful in taking some of the accumulated-by-time thickness out of Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” (Deutsche Grammophon Archiv 429 779).

The conductor, with the English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir, presents a mobile, exultant and dramatic, rather than hectoring, “Missa.” Perhaps Leonard Bernstein and other conductors of the Romantic persuasion have squeezed more expressive juice out of some slow sections. But Gardiner ultimately satisfies with his powerfully unified concept.

His solo quartet, appropriately lighter voiced than the leather lungs required to compete with the larger forces used elsewhere, comprises Margiono, mezzo Catherine Robbin, tenor William Kendall and baritone Alastair Miles.

Among no fewer than five recent recordings (where will it end?) of Haydn’s mighty “The Creation,” one that attempts historical re-creation has Christopher Hogwood directing his Academy of Ancient Music orchestra and chorus (L’Oiseau-Lyre 430 397, two CDs).

Hogwood’s recording employs the edition and forces--120-piece orchestra, 80-member chorus--of a Vienna performance (not the premiere) conducted by Haydn. Fine so far, particularly with such lusty, accurate playing and singing as are heard here.

But Hogwood undermines his project by using an awkward English translation Haydn heard years later and, according to the present recording’s notes, “endorsed.”

Perhaps the composer wasn’t really listening. It is obvious from the outset with, in this instance, the first utterances of the frail-sounding basso (Michael George) and then, more so, in the opening lines of the tenor (the very refined Anthony Rolfe Johnson) that there are too many syllables in the English version to fit the composer’s notation.

Then too there is a return to the silly ornamentation of the vocal solos--the gratuitous yodeling, leading us to wonder whether the soloist will ever re-emerge in the home key--considered stylish a quarter-century ago.

There is an equal amount of drama, plus the original German text of Haydn’s setting and a perfection-is-good-enough attitude toward the score, in the modern-instruments Deutsche Grammophon recording (427 629, two CDs).

Here, James Levine vigorously and sensitively leads the Berlin Philharmonic, excellent Swedish choruses and a starry solo trio: soprano Kathleen Battle, tenor Gosta Winbergh and basso Kurt Moll.

The historical-minded may be interested in yet another authentic edition of Monteverdi’s mighty, magnificent “Vespro della Beata Vergine” of 1610. This one, conducted by Philip Pickett (L’Oiseau-Lyre 425 823), contends that Monteverdi aimed for optimum clarity amid the acoustical traps of the great Italian cathedrals.

Accordingly, Pickett does away with the chorus usually heard in this music and presents the “choruses” one voice to a part.

The result is, unquestionably, clarity. But since that is attainable on recordings with the largest forces, one is more aware of the lessening of the music’s effect--not merely by the size of the singing but also by the conductor’s monotonous, usually fast pacing. Ultimately, Monteverdi’s Byzantine splendor is reduced to English decorum.

A word of praise, nonetheless, for the virtuosic playing of the New London Consort on a variety of old instruments and for the dead-center vocalism of sopranos Catherine Bott and Tessa Bonner.