The interest in this album was brought about by a review of the extra baroque embellishment and the fact it is on the label that provided last year's best record, of Buxtehude.
Having become very accustomed to the Tallis Scholars' recording of the Miserere and imagining Allegri an obscure genius, before acquiring other interpretations, it requires a bit of a shift to accept others, as if they are inferior cover versions.
Thus Le Poeme Harmonique seem too slow at first which is rich coming from me who usually complains that tempi are too quick, but perhaps this is only in order to expand into the extraordinarily lavish decoration that would presumably come as some surprise to Gregorio if he heard what had they done do his plainsong. It will take some adjusting to. One doesn't expect liberties to be taken with such repertoire but if it is added improvisation it is open season and I suspect that I'm going to enjoy it more as I become accustomed to it. There would have been no point buying an album that was reported to be different in approach if it had sounded not much different.
Moving into a passionate Un Allato Messagier by Luigi Rossi, a few years younger than Allegri and thirty years younger than the forthcoming Monteverdi, I need the booklet notes which, for worse rather than better, are translated from the French,
The pictural principle of anamorphosis is an allegorical illustration of this new way of making music. It aptly indicates - the Baroque being first and foremost an art of synaesthesia - the interlacing of artistic disciplines, here the poetic word and its rhetorical vector, with its musical garb, in the service of an edifying mission.
I apologize if I ever suggested that some poetry criticism tries too hard. I also acknowledge that music is difficult to write about when all one needs to do is listen to it. On the other hand, I wonder if it means they are lingering over and treasuring every nuance, all the potential, of the text to take 'baroque' a bit further. Don't quote me on that.
It does sound fantastically indulgent, sumptuously recorded and sensual. It does not remind me of Ton Koopman's spare Buxtehude at all but through Monteverdi's Si Dolce e 'l Martire and the Anonymous Domine, ne in Furore Tuo, I'm persuaded by it. By the obvious thrill of those performing it and, I hope, not by the gin and bitter lemon. It is the voices, always, that it is about, which is a tribute to the unimposing subtlety of the instruments that include cornet and organ sparingly among the strings.
Domenico Mazzocchi's brief contribution is one for the 'obscure composer collectors', which makes its standard point about fleeting beauty in a chatty way. Conversations between voices continue and the only question that arises is quite how much one needs. The gusto of Monteverdi's Pascha Concelebranda moves into something more decorative and one can wonder at how far we've come from the elaborate Miserere. One only treasures some of the singing less for having had so much of it earlier. It might be the sort of feast to be taken in stages for fear of indiscriminate gluttony. The finale is Monteverdi's take on O, death, where is your victory/Where is your sting? in which he was overtaken by Herr Haendel a hundred years later.
There might be ways of seeing this as the album of the year and further listening might clarify such claims but Isata Kanneh-Mason is in its way, not only the record but the whole Clara Schumann story and the immaculate concert in Southampton a couple of months ago. That will be hard to get past but it will be given plenty of chances, possibly in small helpings, because it might be a bit rich all in one go.
