Le Concert Spirituel & Herve Niquet - Benevolo: Missa si Deus pro nobis & Magnificat (2018) [CD Rip]

A master of the early Baroque polychoral style, Orazio Benevolo composed sacred works which are noted for their multiple vocal and instrumental parts. They have scant representation on recordings, though, so Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel are among the first artists to do justice to Benevolo's music with this 2018 release on Alpha. The featured works are the Missa Si Deus pro nobis ("If God is for us") for 16 voices, and a suitable companion piece, the Magnificat for 16 voices, though Niquet employs 32 singers in 8 choirs and 16 instrumentalists. Interspersed between the mass movements are additional motets by Claudio Monteverdi, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and Girolamo Frescobaldi, and examples of plainchant, which contextualize Benevolo's music with religious music of the time and fill out what would otherwise be a rather short program. Benevolo may have spent much of his career in Rome, but listeners may find much in common with the antiphonal music of the Venetian school, of which Monteverdi and Giovanni Gabrieli are exemplars. Also noteworthy is Niquet's clear deployment of the choirs and the careful pacing of the music, which allows Benevolo's intensely expressive harmonies to properly sound without blurring, and to clarify details in the counterpoint that might be lost in the highly resonant acoustics of Église Notre-Dame du Liban, Paris. This disc is highly recommended for anyone interested in Baroque sacred music and especially for fans of Niquet's exciting renditions of rarely performed works. -- Blair Sanderson