Latest CD releases reviewed

FAURÉ: REQUIEM; CANTIQUE DE JEAN RACINE
Sandrine Piau (soprano), Stéphane Degout (baritone), Maîtrise de Paris, Accentus, Orchestre National de France/Laurence Equilbey Naïve V5137 *****
Fauré's publisher, Hamelle, twisted the composer's arm to produce a version of his Requiem for large orchestra. The lighter, idiosyncratically scored original lay forgotten for most of the 20th century and wasn't published until1994. Laurence Equilbey treats it with veritable kid gloves, shaping the choral lines with the utmost tenderness on what sounds like a homeopathic principle of less being more. The effect is in all ways utterly ravishing. The performance meshes with a special radiance that is frequently heart-stopping, creating a little bit of heaven on earth in a work that was written, Fauré said, "for no reason - for pleasure, if I may venture to say so!" www.naiveclassique.com MICHAEL DERVAN

HANDEL: PARNASSO IN FESTA
Diana Moore (Apollo & Euterpe), Carolyn Sampson (Clio), Lucy Crowe (Orfeo), Rebecca Outram (Calliope), Ruth Clegg (Clori), Peter Harvey (Marte), Choir of the King's Consort, King's Consort/ Matthew Halls Hyperion CDA 67701/2 (2 CDs) ****
Handel's little-known serenata Parnasso in Festawas written form the 1734 marriage in London of Princess Anne of Hanover to Prince William of Orange. It's a fine piece of work, but one which has had to wait until now for a recording. This may be explained by the fact that Handel engaged in his habit of recycling material, in this case borrowing most heavily on his oratorio Athalia, which premiered in Oxford in 1733. Never mind. There are nine new numbers, and everything in this sharp and perceptive performance under the King's Consort's new director, Matthew Halls sounds fresh-minted. www.tinyurl.com/5jub7c MICHAEL DERVAN

CZERNY: PIANO SONATAS VOL 1
Martin Jones (piano) Nimbus NI 5832/3 (2 CDs) ***
Carl Czerny (1791-1857) has long been the scourge of piano students everywhere - his studies, which he wrote by the hundred, are still in use today. A pupil of Beethoven and teacher of Liszt, Czerny was equally prolific as an actual composer, and the single late nocturne that accompanies Martin Jones's selection of four sonatas is his Op 647! The sonatas are a lot better than Czerny's low reputation might have you imagine. He was a real pro, understood his instrument and knew how to stir up an exciting storm. The flaws are those of a misfired Hollywood blockbuster:
All the right buttons seem to be pressed, but the message somehow doesn't cohere. Martin Jones plays them well enough to make one wonder what the effect in concert might be. www.wyastone.co.uk MICHAEL DERVAN

KNAIFEL: BLAZHENSTVA;
LAMENTO
Tatiana Lementieva (soprano), Piotr Migunov (bass), Lege Artis Choir, State Hermitage Orchestra/ Ivan Monighetti (piano, cello) ECM New Series 476 6767 ***
If you enjoy the poetry of slow motion - the lazy descent of a petal or a feather, or the extremes that movie cameras open up - then Alexander Knaifel's Blazhenstva (The Beatitudes)may be just the thing for you. Written in 1996 for the 70th birthday of cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, Blazhenstvais a work of extended 37-minute) distension, its sound world mimicking the haloed hollow resonances of slowed down recordings. Its extreme spareness - it often pares down to the merest tendril - is likely to divide responses, one person's atmosphere being another's emptiness. The earlier (1967, revised 1987) Lamentofor solo cello is altogether more explosive: extempore, exploratory and emotional in manner. www.ecmrecords.com MICHAEL DERVAN