Two of the UK’s finest early music voices divvy up Les Leçons de Ténèbres – outrageously sensual liturgical lamentations written by François Couperin for Holy Week in 1714. In the first lesson, Lucy Crowe is ecstatic and golden, ravishing in her upper flourishes and the way she pushes and lingers on those achy-sweet dissonances. In the second lesson, Elizabeth Watts is grainier, softer-edged, earthier. When they sing together in the third lesson, the combination is breathtaking. Instrumental playing from La Nuova Musica under conductor David Bates is delicate and much more deadpan, providing a semblance of chasteness. A major bonus is the deft and elegant violin playing of Bojan Čičić in two sonatas by Sébastien de Brossard. (Brossard was a French composer a few decades older than Couperin and, incidentally, authored the first musical dictionary). The disc ends with succulent choral singing in Brossard’s Stabat Mater.
