This release of a 20-minute devotional work by Henryk Gorecki might seem like cashing in on the phenomenal popularity of the Third Symphony, but it undoubtedly deserves attention in its own right, not least for the sublimely beautiful ''Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis''. Against a wash of sustained organ tone (the kind of thing to which the instrument is uniquely suited) the solo voice projects incantations to the Black Virgin of Jasnogora. Sarah Leonard has just the voice to encapsulate both the humility and spiritual intensity of this music; which is just as well since the recording places her so artificially forward of the organ that even when Christopher Bowers-Broadbent is using a gloriously gutsy full organ, she still overwhelms him with her impassioned ''Claramontana Victoriosa''.
Gavin Bryars offers a little more scope for colour in his similar-length work. The French text (from Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea), while intrinsically more picturesque than Gorecki's Latin prayers, still has something of the devotional about it which is compellingly portrayed in this most sensitive performance. Leonard seems to float above the organ—despite, again, the best endeavours of the balance engineers.
There's supposed to be a voice (or voices) to go with the organ in Satie's Messe. Heard here without any, it seems a somewhat pointless exercise. There is a deep, rich quality to the music, but the very obvious sound of the organ trackers emphasizes a rhythmic character I'm sure Satie never intended.
One day I shall try to decipher Wilfrid Mellers's convoluted sleeve-notes. How strange that such direct and accessible music should be illuminated by such mind-numbingly incomprehensible explanations.'