Classical

Les Arts Florissants/William Christie
Handel: Belshazzar
Harmonia mundi HMX8904127-29 (three discs)

With only two high-profile recordings – led by Harnoncourt and Pinnock – Belshazzar has rather fallen through the cracks of the Handelian revival. Yet in 1744 he was at the peak of his powers – and the 80-year-old Christie is enjoying an Indian summer of his own. Anyone who recalls Rosemary Joshua’s Semele from the ’90s will find she has lost none of her articulate brilliance as Nitocris. As her son, the drama’s eponymous king, Allen Clayton is unmatched for heroic lyricism. Choruses such as ‘By slow degrees’ are allotted all their due space in terms of both pulse and acoustic. Indeed the balance struck by Christie between the oratorio’s ceremonial and dramatic elements reaches near Wagnerian heights. PQ

Sound Quality: 90%

Hallé/Thomas Adès
Adès: Aquifer, Dawn, Shanty; Leith: Cartoon Sun; Marsey: Man With Limp Wrist
Hallé CDHLL7567

The Adès sound – of circling tunes and Escherian scales, tangled in a love-hate relationship with music history – may be established by now, but he still rings the changes with the flourish of a showman new in town. Aquifer is a huge Mahlerian Scherzo, as densely packed and fast-flowing as Dawn is spare and open. Oliver Leith’s Cartoon Sun finds three novel ways of capturing extreme brightness in sound, often anchored (like Adès’s music) by tonal chords and pedal points. The eight ‘scenes’ of William Marsey’s Man With Limp Wrist are still more allusive, and charged with oblique, Haydnesque wit. PQ

Sound Quality: 85%

Ensemble Modern, Loadbang, etc
Kendall: Shouting Forever Into The Receiver, etc
NMC NMCD285

London born, New York resident, Hannah Kendall (b.1984) seems to write wherever her ear takes her, across notional boundaries of form and scoring. Her titles are more like short stories, giving little away. Each piece here has a back story, often using ‘found’ material such as Biblical verses or gospel hymns, but there’s nothing antique or religious about the result. Slow suspensions yield unexpected life in Even Sweetness Can Scratch The Throat. The subterranean elegies of When Flesh Is Pressed Against The Glass surface in the glinting ripples of Tuxedo: Diving Bell 2 for harp. The title track is a slow processional underscored by ghostly walkie-talkies. PQ

Sound Quality: 85%

New College Choir, Oxford/Quinney
Mundy: Vox Patris Caelestis, etc
Linn CKD775 (downloads to 192kHz/24-bit resolution)

On score and on record, William Mundy is rarely encountered outside collections of c.16th-century church music. As both dynamic director and illuminating note-writer, Robert Quinney has the full measure of him, from the decorous imitation of the early Kyrie and soaring piety of O Lord The Maker to the vast, 20m span and mazy polyphony of Vox Patris Caelestis. All-male choirs bring a special ring of authenticity to this music, and Quinney favours a gutsy, high-energy sound from his trebles – once known as ‘Continental’ – which draws in the ear rather than keeping it at a liturgical distance. A Victorian church in Oxford makes an acoustically glowing venue. PQ

Sound Quality: 80%