Stabat Mater & Motets to the Virgin Mary
Jaroussky; Ensemble Artaserse
Virgin 693 9072

Release date April 2010

I must admit I was rather excited to find that, having slightly disappointed me with his previous solo album, Opium (featuring French vocal works from the 19th and 20th centuries), this month Jaroussky has decided to return to his specialist era, early Baroque. Stabat Mater, as the title suggests, is a disc of Marian motets by Roman and Venetian composers of the early seventeenth century. With the help of what sounds like several carefully and closely-positioned microphones, the listener is drawn into an intimate tour of the private chapels of a variety of Roman and Venetian clerics. The ever-clean, pure and almost vibrato-less tone of Jaroussky is accurately matched by the equally delicious tone of Marie-Nicole Lemieux; they combine to make the perfect vehicle for these seldom-heard motets. Interestingly, it is Lemieux who performs the lower, second part in both of the duet tracks featured on the disc. The breath taking Sances motet Stabat Mater is for me a particular favourite. Here, free sections of solo recitative accompanied only by chamber organ are interspersed with aria sections based on the chromatic falling fourth (nicknamed passus duriusculus) which are accompanied by the full ensemble of two violins, viola da gamba, baroque guitar and theorbo. Stabat Mater is a treasure chest: full of all sorts of delights, quirky harmonic shifts and bitter-sweet lament melodies. What a shame it is that there isn’t more information about the individual tracks in the otherwise well-written programme notes.
Reviewed by Wayne Weaver