FAURÉ Requiem (1893).1 Tantum ergo.2 Ave verum.3 Ave Maria.4 FAURÉ/MESSAGER Messe des pêcheurs de Villerville5 • Michel Corboz, cond; Ana Quintans (sop);1,2 Peter Harvey (bar);1 Marcelo Giannini (org);1,2,3,4,5 Ens Vocal de Lausanne;1,2,3,4,5 Snf Varsovia1,2,3,4,5 • MIRARE 28 (63:00 Text and Translation)

Through half-a-lifetime Michel Corboz’s way with the Requiem has been essentially the same—unpretentious, intimate, consoling, and companionable. His 1972 account (reissued on CD in the early 1980s—Erato 88126, Fanfare 10:1) set the tone of straightforwardness in a work which had become, and continues to be, a vehicle for name conductors and soloists working a spin often alien to its liturgical function. Corboz’s choice of boy soprano, Alain Clément, for the “Pie Jesu” and the undemonstratively authoritative Philippe Huttenlocher in the “Offertoire” and “Libera me” underlined the simplicity of his approach. His 1992 re-make with the Ensemble vocal de Lausanne, which he founded, included the Cantique de Jean Racine, five motets, and the Messe basse (FNAC 592097, Fanfare 17:1)—a treasurable program featuring Magali Dami, a mature soprano with a boyish voice, in the “Pie Jesu,” and Peter Harvey’s firm but self-effacing prayerfulness in the solos. For the present performance, Harvey is back, his pleasant light baritone darkened just a bit, but evincing the same paradoxical mixture of impersonality and expressiveness. And Corboz is able to have it both ways, again, in the “Pie Jesu” with Ana Quintans—a graduate in sculpture from the University of Fine Arts in Lisbon who has studied Lieder performance with Sarah Walker, Tom Krause, and Graham Johnson—whose bright but disarmingly boyish soprano complements her unaffected delivery. For this latest go at the Requiem, Corboz essays the 1893 chamber-ensemble version, though those familiar with his previous large orchestra accounts will note little difference, given his suavity. His steady but unobtrusive pulse lends a gentle buoyancy to the entire program, brisk in the “Agnus Dei” and trenchant only in the “Libera me.”

The motets glow, while the ineffable charm and sweetness of the seldom-heard Messe des pêcheurs de Villerville, composed with his friend André Messager (responsible for the “Kyrie” and “O Salutaris”), lifts with aerated swing. The chorus is recessed—though it fills the aural frame at climactic moments—with the chamber orchestra upfront, a very churchlike arrangement. Harvey is a looming presence from the middle distance, and Quintans is highlighted. This is to live with. And if you have one or both of Corboz’s previous performances you will want this for the Messe des pêcheurs, if not to follow the ways by which the more his inflections change from one performance to another, the more his overall grasp remains persuasively, enchantingly, compellingly the same.

FANFARE: Adrian Corleonis