The stimulus for this programme of French and American music is the annual gathering in the South of France of singers drawn from the universities of Boston, Ohio State and California. True, Britten was no more American than Henk Badings was French (Badings was actually born in Indonesia) but the Hymn to St Cecilia was conceived in America and the voluptuous Chansons bretonnes sound almost more Debussian than Debussy’s own charming Chansons.
Anyone who, like me, has tried to mould individual singers into a homogeneous choral entity can only listen to this disc in open-mouthed awe. Robert Shaw has produced choral singing of such absolute precision, impeccable blend, flawless intonation and infinite flexibility that it seems inconceivable that he is dealing with, according to the booklet, 76 individual voices. How does he do it?
Some folk, though, are never satisfied. Technical perfection is not enough for them. Indeed some equate painstakingly prepared technical excellence with artistic sterility. They might just have a point here. Brilliantly executed as the quicksilver changes of speed and mood in Ravel’s cheeky “Nicolette” are, both the Ravel and Debussy Chansons seem uninvolved and impersonal, while the emotion which is applied so heavily to the Poulenc seems horribly false. The language coach has done a remarkable job in producing from these singers such unity of idiomatic pronunciation, but some guidance in the subtleties of the French language might not have gone amiss. Un soir de neige has an undercurrent of bitterness and despair (as well it might coming from the long years of Nazi occupation in Paris) which this performance misses by miles.'