Longing for the sounds of Good Friday

Music
Edward Breen
After singing Mass for Ash Wednesday this year I found myself contemplating what the Lenten season meant to me. Certainly I would be making a token gesture of restraining from the odd luxury, but my overwhelming thoughts about the season were one of fondness for the music of Holy Week. It seems like a guilty secret to admit that I am actu
. ally looking forward to Good Friday, but when I add that I will be singing Bach's St Matthew Passion that afternoon I am sure you will understand.
My chain of thought grew into a conversation with several friends last week and each of us spoke enthusiastically about our favourite Lenten discs. My choices seem to be all early music but thatis not to say I don't have some favourites in later repertoire too. Here is my selection for Lenten devotion.
The first disc is Passion. sung by The Orlando Consort. (Metronome METCD1015). This is a mini-anthology of 15th century music on the theme of the passion and resurrection of Christ. The programme is beautifully crafted to take this listener from the depths of sadness in Maundy Thursday. Good Friday and Easter Saturday up to the joy of Easter Morning. It starts with an intriguing setting of The Lamentations of Jeremiah by Johannes Ttnctores whom many of us will know from his status as a musical theorist. But the main offering of this disc is the Easter Mass Proper by Heinrich Isaac. The Orlandos handle this difficult music with ease and the singing is expressive without being too laboured. However, what always jumps out at me is their tuning. The whole recording shimmers because of the accuracy with which these singers can tune to one another and each successive listening reveals more detail in the music that I had not previously noticed making this
recording one of the most astonishing discs of Lenten music that I own.
Another composer principally known to me as a theorist is reflected in my next choice: Lecon des mods by Sebastien De Brossard recorded by II Seminario Musicale (Virgin Classics VC5 452712). This music is scored for Soprano and Alto duet and both Gerard Lesne and Veronique Gem display wonderfully expressive vocal work. I think Lesne is my favourite countertenor for this French repertoire as he can handle the fiendishly low passages without any hint of a gear-change to chest voice and here he works with Gem to make the tastefully exciting scamd one associates with II Semenario Musicale. The real jewel of this progranune however, is the Dialogus poenitentis animae rum Deo, a mini-oratorio in which god is asked for forgiveness. These are moving performances of thought-provoking texts.
I am always pleased to see another instalment of Byrd from The Cardinall's Musick, and Volume Six Music for Holy Week and Easter is no exception. The opening motet Plorans Plorabit sets the
mood for Holy Week while this programme takes us through most of Byrd's Holy Week and Easter music including the Holy Saturday Vespers and the Mass Propers for Easter Day. Andrew Carwood's singers are another favourite group of mine and they are equally at home with the men's voice settings as well as when they are joined by a fabulous soprano section.
However, no Lenten selection would be complete without a recording of Bach's St Matthew Passion and my current favourite (although a hard choice) is the recent offering from Nikolaus Hamoncourt and Concentus Musicus. Those of us familiar with Bach's Matthew Passion will be aware of the difficulties in pacing the work, yet here Hamoncourt seems to have a clear vision right from the beginning of where this account is going and how it is going to get there. The tempi are brisk but never hurried and Christopher Pregardieds Evangelist really declaims the text rather than resorting to the bedtime storytelling that "early music" has so often offered us. Definitely a Matthew Passion to treasure.