Jean Racine's ''Spiritual Canticles taken from the Scriptures'', penned for the nuns of the Maison Royale at St Cyr and bearing titles such as ''On the blessedness of the just and on the wretchedness of the reprobates'' and ''Plaints of a Christian on the contradictions he feels within himself'', do not, perhaps, promise unalloyed entertainment. And neither, I suspect, will potential CD-buyers' imaginations be easily fired by a disc devoted mainly to settings of them for solo voices and continuo by the relatively little-known French baroque composer Pascal Collasse. But if you do find yourself mulling over this release, do give it another thought. Collasse—pupil and assistant to Lully and subsequently a respected opera and church composer in his own right—set Racine's texts ''as a pure explanation of the words'', but within that apparent limitation found a direct, uncomplicated way of putting across their meaning which owed much to the declamatory style of contemporary French opera.
Which brings us to the other reason for giving this recording a try, namely the performances. Quite simply, the effectiveness of this music is maximized through renditions which are strong, intelligent, even dramatic. Some listeners might think it rather intense (and indeed the singing is at times a little harsh, not helped by a close, rather dry recording); but there's no doubt that Le Concert Royal have really created something from music that could easily have been made to sound routine, simply by giving careful thought to the words and the way Collasse set them, and then by putting that boldly into practice with a rather tangy French baroque pronunciation. For that, congratulations. Any thoughts, furthermore, that this is a one-off achievement should be dispelled by the vivid expressive and rhetorical gestures which violinist Patrick Bismuth tosses into the Rebel suite which leavens the disc's theological bread. I hope we hear more from this group before long.'