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Piety takes many forms and this rather unshapely recital seeks to enshrine music that is of special significance to Angela Gheorghiu, not least in its dedication to her late sister, Nina. Opening with the tap of the toaca, a wooden percussion instrument used instead of a bell in Orthodox Moldavia, we are immediately immersed in the music of the Romanian twentieth century sacred revival. Of the four pieces the most affecting and affectingly sung is Iubi-Te-voi, Doamne - here as elsewhere on this disc Chris Hazell has undertaken the majority of orchestrations and arrangements. Decca could have spared a few lines to introduce him. Throughout the standard of singing is high – though by no means consistently so in matters of interpretation –and the support offered by the LPO under Ion Marin is best described as dutiful. Singing in English, German, Latin, Italian and her native Romanian Gheorghiu covers a wide range of ground, geographically and liturgically. Her Fauré I found unaffecting, her German in the Mendelssohn unidiomatic and the performance unconvincing. In the Puccini Salve Regina her voice opens out naturally with splendid results though the work itself is of limited musical interest. Her colouristic shading in the Mascagni is affectionately done and the oboe in Niedermeyer’s Pieta, Signore is as felicitous as is her singing. The Schubert is over emoted, with a melismatic choral contribution, piping woodwind and an outbreak of lush strings. Interesting, though, to hear how first the clarinets and finally the horns state the melody at the end – a piece of rather beguilingly obvious orchestration by Hazell. The John Wade Adeste, fideles is suitably ridiculous, if lusty.

Notes are of the kind one would expect, with texts in four languages, and, as I indicated earlier, nothing on arrangers and orchestrators.

Jonathan Woolf

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