Globe and Mail- Carissimi Oratorios

The members of Les Voix Baroques – including countertenor Matthew White, sopranos Suzie LeBlanc and Catherine Webster, tenor Colin Balzer, and baritone Tyler Duncan – are among this country’s best early-music singers, and the vocal solos of the four mid-17th century Latin oratorios recorded here are exquisitely sung. But the choruses, particularly the laments at the emotional core of Carissimi’s subtly dramatic settings of Old Testament stories, are finer still. Harmonic progressions open like flowers in slow-motion photography; pungent dissonances, perfectly tuned, arch and resolve. One also relishes the delicacy of instrumental entries and an elegant continuity within each piece.