Sacred Music: Cornerstone Works

*****


Sacred Music: Cornerstone Works (Harmonia Mundi, through Ode Records)

Verdict: "Bargain of the decade showcases centuries of choral splendour."

The 29 CDs of Harmonia Mundi's new Sacred Music: Cornerstone Works are a splendid monument to 15 centuries of choral magnificence. To have well over 24 hours of wonderful music for a mere $100, complete with a handsome tome of programme notes and all sung texts available on a 30th CD, must be the bargain of the decade.

Harmonia Mundi is a label with pedigree and some classic recordings included in the new set may already be familiar. Yet Rene Jacobs' 1997 account of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, launching the festive season with an invigorating blast of timpani, still remains at the top of its field.

So too is Philippe Herreweghe's Brahms Requiem from 1996, with a young Gerald Finley proving himself a heldenbariton of promise.

On another pair of discs, Herreweghe cuts through to the drama of Mendelssohn's St Paul, a work that can be irksomely sludgy under the wrong baton. German text and Matthias Goerne playing Paulus help.

Jacobs and Herreweghe are the stars of the set, but they are not alone. Where would you find a more rewarding Messiah than that recorded by William Christie in 1994 with his Les Arts Florisants. With an overture that might have slipped out of a Rameau ballet, it is almost as if Handel has been gym-toned.

Again, could one improve on soloists Barbara Schlick, Sandrine Piau, Andreas Scholl, Mark Padmore and Nathan Berg? I think not.

All is not weighty oratorio fare. Dotted through the set are many inspired and inspiring shorter offerings. Paul Hillier's Theatre of Voices seems to take you into the Gothic ambience of Notre Dame itself when they sing the 13th century music of Perotin, while Marcus Creed's RIAS Kammerchor illuminate a procession of Poulenc motets.

It is fascinating to travel from a 7th-century Mozarabic chant to Leonard Bernstein's Mass, with its bristling jazz and rock-influence vernacular, but one does feel a distinct lack of representation from the later 20th century. Could something not have been taken from the label's excellent explorations of Baltic choral music? And where, for that matter, are the rough-hewn psalm settings of that Bostonian maverick, William Billings (1746-1800), which Paul Hillier lovingly recorded on Harmonia Mundi some years ago? But let's be optimistic. Maybe Volume Two is already in the pipeline?