I thought this release would be interesting and I was right. The rare opportunity to hear music by Berlioz's teacher and one of the most respected church composers in France during the early 1800s held my attention—for about ten minutes. For the remaining 55 I wished I were doing something else. This is not, I have to say, entirely Le Sueur's fault. Admittedly, this music, composed for the coronation of Charles X at Reims in 1825, is almost purely functional, disconnected material from a sacred oeuvre in which, we are told, the composer sought to counteract the effect of excessive reverberation in large churches by avoiding counterpoint or difficult modulations, by embracing repetitive phrases as an anti-echo device (that's what it says—don't ask me how) and by rejecting the use of soloists in favour of petits-chors. Transfer the results to a CD player in your own home, and for anyone expecting some kind of proto-Berliozian feast it's like living for a week on bread and water.
Yet Le Sueur at least knew what he was doing; his long experience in large churches taught him what was required, and he was able to compensate with a certain measure of Gounod-like melodic charm. Opus 111, on the other hand, show little idea of how to promote his music to advantage. Never mind that a Mass or a cantata would have been more satisfying than these occasional pieces; here there is no text and a baffling set of notes which purport to place the music in context but from which it is actually rather difficult to tell which coronation you are in, let alone which movement. The performances themselves—employing what sounds like a sizeable period orchestra—do attempt to capture something of an appropriate spirit, and they are helped by a suitably cavernous acoustic; but I'm afraid it's a lost cause. An advertisement in the booklet suggests that there is a connection between the recording and the Festival des Cathedrales de Picardie.'