Charivari Agréable, Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum, Benjamin Nicholas - Mozart: Vesperae Solennes De Confessore & Coronation Mass (2011)

Generations of recordings by English cathedral choirs may have conditioned listeners to expect calm purity, but that's not what's here in the least from the all-male Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum and the historically oriented instrumental ensemble Charivari Agréable under Kah-Ming Ng and Benjamin Nicholas, respectively. The vocal group's boy choristers look rather obstreperous in the graphics, and indeed their sound is full-throated, a bit rough, and even passionate. Unlike the Choir of St. John's College historical-instrument recording of the Mozart Mass in C major, K. 317 ("Coronation"), that appeared at roughly the same time, Ng uses boy soprano and alto soloists, forcing them just a bit beyond their comfort zone with quick tempos and the overall big sound of the interpretation. It's certainly a distinctive reading, and the increasing selection of boychoir recordings is desirable, for this was the medium for which the work was composed. But sample the larger movements of the mass a bit before buying. This may be a case of the characteristic rigidly terraced results that occur when Baroque-oriented groups (of which Charivari Agréable is one) venture into Classical-era repertory. Ng emphasizes the brass and timpani, matching the oddly big sound he gets out of the boy choristers but diminishing the lyricism and grace of the work and losing some of its small details. The losses are even greater in the Vesperae solennes de Confessore, K. 339, which are written on a less grand scale than the mass. This is a recording to which individual responses are likely to vary widely, with some appreciating the creative use of the boychoir, but others put off by the unorthodox Mozartian language.