Joan of Arc casts an appraising eye over this disc of Leonard Bernstein’s choral music, conducted by his protege Marin Alsop. Inspired by Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher, the Symphony No 3 centres on a narrator – here Claire Bloom, declaiming Bernstein’s original, longer text in expressive RSC tones. Each of the three movements includes a setting of the Kaddish prayer, most strikingly a yearning soprano solo in the second movement. Alsop gets colour and intensity from the orchestra, but the singing voices are far back in the mix and sound thin. In the other works, the energetic São Paulo Symphony Choir emerges more impressively. The medieval-meets-modern Missa Brevis, with its androgynous countertenor soloist, draws upon the neat little episodes of incidental music Bernstein wrote for the 1955 Broadway performances of The Lark, Jean Anouilh’s play about Joan of Arc, scored for seven singers. A linking narration deftly gives a flavour of the play.
