Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, City of London Sinfonia, George Guest - Charpentier: Messe de minuit pour Noel / Poulenc: Motets (1989)

With four recordings in six months, this seems to be open season for the Poulenc motets. The newcomers are up against stiff competition, and don't emerge unscathed from comparison either with the college next door (under Marlow on Conifer) or with the choir under the musical director of the one further along the road (Rutter on Collegium/Gamut). They are at their best in the penitential motets, sung with firm, well-blended tone and intensity of feeling: there is loving quality in ''Vinea mea electa'' and the requisite beatific calm at ''quoniam in te confidit anima mea'' (in ''Timor et tremor''), but they don't match the sombre atmosphere created by Rutter's choir at the start of ''Tenebrae factae sunt'', and the solo opening of ''Tristis est anima mea'' is not absolutely secure (nor, later, is the entry on ''ecce'' quite together). In the Christmas motets there is a slightly untidy first phrase in ''Videntes stellam'', too loud and unmysterious an opening to ''O magnum mysterium'', and too hurried a pace for ''Quem vidistis''; but this set is also notable for some exaggerated accents and hairpin dynamics which sound contrived rather than natural. This is most prominent in ''Hodie Christus natus est'' which, though cleaner-cut than in the reverberant Trinity/Marlow recording, has a soberly studied approach (but snatched phrase-endings) quite lacking the infectiously joyous quality of Rutter's performance. Guest takes Salve regina (again with self-conscious tonal swellings) much faster than either of his rivals—surely too fast? This perhaps is the cause of some less than exact ensemble and some loss of unanimity by the trebles.
In the manuscript of his Midnight Mass based on Christmas carols, Charpentier calls for the organ to take up the vocal theme after the Kyrie and after the second Christe: in lieu of improvisations at these points, Colleaux in his Arion/Discovery recording very aptly introduces variants by Charpentier's contemporaries Lebegue and Raison. Guest omits these interludes entirely, but as, even after allowing for this, he takes nine minutes longer over the Mass than Colleaux—a considerable amount, in a 21-minute work!—the difference in interpretation is conspicuous. His is a more 'churchy', less paganly sparkling, approach; but while this is acceptable enough, the anachronisms of his reading falsify the style. Even in an unabashedly modern performance (with flutes rather than recorders) that disregards all the characteristic cadences preparees (appoggiaturas followed by mordents) and whose sole concession to period practice is the adoption of rhythmic inegalites, over-sophisticated phrasing such as in the orchestral introduction to the Kyrie is out of place; and some tempos (as at ''Et in terra pax'' or ''Qui tollis'') seem excessively slow. The ''Quoniam'' opening lies uncomfortably high for the treble soloists—Colleaux's sopranos sound equally unhappy at this point; and a passage of really bad ensemble between organ and solo voices at ''Crucifixus'' should not have been passed. It particularly pains me, as a Johnian, to say that this disc is a disappointment.