Search - Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Hervé Niquet, Le Concert Spirituel :: Charpentier - Messe des morts · Litanies / Le Concert Spirituel · Niquet

Very nice (and inexpensive) 17th century Liturgical music

B. Marold | Bethlehem, PA United States | 03/17/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"For the longest time, I tended to look down my nose at Naxos releases for no good reason whatsoever, except for the very mistaken belief that if I get the same work for three times the price from Hyperion, it will be three times better. Then, I started discovering that Naxos had some works which were simply not available on Hyperion or one of those other high falutin labels. Naxos probably doesn't do large ensemble works as well as the big guys, but for simple works like these, they do just fine thank you. I especially like the liturgical music from this period, as I think the secular sound all sounds overly brassy, like the Purcell piece used to theme 'Masterpiece Theatre'. For a very good price, we get a complete requiem mass and 'Litanies a la Vierge' coming in at about 61 minutes. Notes are a bit thinner than what you get from Hyperion and the Latin is not translated, but the Latin text is there."