Lassus Lagrime di San Pietro. Ars Nova / Bo Holten.

Naxos (Super budget price) (CD) 8 553311 (55 minutes: DDD).

With the Danish group Ars Nova, Naxos’s stable of early music performers acquires a distinguished new member. Gramophone readers may be aware of their previous association with the Kontrapunkt label; let’s hope that the move heralds more frequent recordings at Naxos’s super-budget price. For their first release with the new label, they ambitiously take on Lassus’s ultimate masterpiece. It is not so long ago that I reviewed two new recordings of the Lagrime di San Pietro, including a superlative reading for solo voices under Philippe Herreweghe’s direction: the piece requires no further introduction.

I must admit to having had initial misgivings as to the suitability of a chamber choir in so intimate a work as this. Admittedly, there are plenty of sonorous moments suited to full choral treatment, but the general sentiment is essentially a private one. Yet this reservation is a personal matter, and in practice Bo Holten’s singers possess enough flexibility to bring out the many nuances of scoring and word-painting. Naturally, some of these nuances and contrapuntal details are clearer in Herreweghe’s reading, yet the more overtly monumental approach does not detract from the work’s effect. That cannot be said, unfortunately, for the unduly long pauses between tracks: a small detail, but one that certainly matters in a cycle of madrigals, conceived architectonically. If I persist in giving Herreweghe the edge, I should point out that his disc is possibly the finest I have ever reviewed. Besides, some listeners may actually find that the choral approach embodied here offers an easier way into this ambitious work. That is no small recommendation.

FF