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In 2004, the Monteverdi Choir celebrated its 40th anniversary with a trek through France and Spain to the shrine at Santiago di Compostela.
This excellent disk is a recording of the programme that was sung on the pilgrimage, and it is just about the highlight of the year for choral music.
I say "just about", for while the performances are of a staggeringly high quality, the sound is often muffled by the unresponsive (or perhaps evocative) acoustic of the London recording venue. The opening of Dum pater familias in particular seems to have been recorded from behind a particularly thick glove.
Yet even with this issue, the CD is one of the most exciting things to have been released in a while. The Monteverdi Choir are famed for their interpretative abilities, but they surpass even their own high standards with this collection of Renaissance and earlier choral music.
The six pieces from the 12th century Codex Calixtinus are especially fine. The chant Dum pater familias is delivered in appropriately decisive manner, while the glistening polyphonic lines of the Congaudeant catholici are whipped through with masterly confidence and understanding. The soprano of Elin Manahan Thomas in the Alma perpetui may not be the clearest thing (again, I sense a problem with the acoustic rather than poor diction) but it embraces the shape of the text and offers shiveringly persuasive tone.
Alongside works by Morales, Palestrina and Victoria, to name but three, the presence of these works is exceptionally pleasing, and is demonstrative of the effort that has been put into this programme. And nowhere is this effort better shown than in the appearance of a piece from the Llibre Vermell (Red Book), the manuscript of which is preserved in the Benedictine monastery of Montserrat today.
Throughout the CD the choir shine, not only in quality of singing, but also in range of dramatic expression. One need only listen to the Sanctus of Clemens non Papa, and hear the sound swell and contract in response to John Eliot Gardiner's spacious conducting. The canon has never seemed so poignant; so ecstatically beautiful.
This is choral music of the highest quality - intelligently researched and perfectly sung - and this reviewer can confidently claim that Gardiner has another defining recording under his belt.
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