Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Te Deum, H. 146, one of four surviving settings he made of the text, is probably the work for which the French Baroque master is best known to modern audiences because its regal instrumental Prelude was used as the theme for Eurovision Television and the documentary The Olympiad. That's all to the good if it leads listeners to further explore the music of Charpentier, which in the late 20th century began to have a slow, belated reemergence into the awareness of music lovers. This Te Deum has had many dozens of recordings and this 2000 version featuring
Martin Gester and the instrumental and vocal ensemble Maîtrise De Bretagne is generally considered one of the finest. At its best, it is very, very good, as are the performances of the other works on the disc, In honorem Sancti Ludovici Regis Galilae Canticum, In honorem Sancti Ludovici Regis Galilae, and the motet Notus in Judea.
Gester does a splendid job of capturing the range of Charpentier's writing, from the crisp, lilting sparkle of the faster movements to the limpid lyricism of the more relaxed movements. The chorus and ensemble in the grand concerted passages sound magnificent. The more intimate moments, which include the solo voice alone or in groups accompanied by a small instrumental ensemble, are decidedly uneven in quality. Some are fabulous, for example, "Te per orbem terrarum sancta confitetur Ecclesia," for two tenors and baritone who sing with sweet tone and whose grasp of ornamentation is sure and spontaneous sounding. In other movements, though, such as the soprano solo "Te ergo quaesumus famulis tuis subveni," the accompanying recorders are so egregiously out of tune (and the recorder playing is so rough throughout the disc) that it's hard not to cringe. The soprano soloists, who sound lovely for the most part, occasionally swoop into their notes to appalling effect. While
Gester gets the bigger picture right, his inattention to details like these makes it impossible to relax and enjoy the performance because the listener never knows when another baffling lapse will pop up. The sound is clear and clean, but doesn't have the kind of immediacy that music of this vitality requires.