Apart from the Miserere, so beloved of Madame de Sevigne, the Te Deum and, to a lesser extent the Dies irae, Lully’s grands motets are seldom heard. All the more welcome, therefore, is a three-volume edition of the works by Le Concert Spirituel directed by Herve Niquet. But first, a word of caution to readers who may already have acquired one or more of these discs overseas. The recordings were made under the auspices of the Versailles-based Centre de Musique Baroque, as part of its series, Musique a Versailles. All three volumes were issued on the now-defunct FNAC label during the mid-1990s, but have since been enterprisingly acquired by Naxos, who will issue the remaining two discs later on.
Niquet is a stylish director whose fluency in the French baroque idiom is well attested by his performances and recordings of Charpentier and Rameau. He brings declamatory vigour, rhythmic incisiveness and, where the contrast exists, a gentler expressive sensibility to music that is redolent of those gestures typifying Bourbon absolutism during the grand siecle. Niquet, furthermore, succeeds where many a predecessor has faltered, in his avoidance of rhythmic monotony which too often is accepted as concomitant to the regularity of French classicism. Orderly, yes, boring, no, though sadly the performances are not well served by the high tenor, Richard Duguay. His tone is pinched and his vocal range severely limited in the upper reaches of an admittedly demanding tessitura. Nor is the recorded sound ideal, suffering from a generally muffled acoustic which soaks up the brilliance of the trumpets.
But readers should not be deterred from exploring these performances, and should take heart from the fact that, in the remaining volumes, the exposed and important part of the solo high tenor is sung by one of the current masters of the range, Jean-Paul Fouchecourt. A stimulating issue in spite of reservations.'