Classical: Bach Collegium Japan

Monteverdi Vespers, BIS

Monteverdi's Vespers are the most frequently performed of his output, but balancing the work's intimacy and ceremonial splendour seems to elude most conductors. Andrew Parrott's ancient one-to-a-part EMI recording still seems the best at capturing intimacy, whereas John Eliot Gardiner's disc for DG is the most martial and extravagant in sound. As is often the case with Bach Collegium Japan, their approach is a reasonably happy compromise; the psalms are over-orchestrated, but they have a pleasing rhythmic crunchiness, and the motets are beautifully confessorial in tone. The only irritant is the unfailingly plangent phrase endings – they're too thrown away to fit the Italian idiom.