L’Enfance du Christ is a unique work; its naiveté and pastoral sweetness can belie its piety and theatricality, and it is important that a conductor be aware that he is presenting a drama, albeit a relatively quiet, understated one. John Eliot Gardiner in his 1988 recording understood this, with José van Dam’s troubled, aggravated Herod and Anne Sofie von Otter’s loving Mary. Philippe Herreweghe, with period instruments and lighter voices (the gorgeously intoned Narrator of Paul Agnew stands out), made a case for intimacy, even though it was an intense intimacy. On this present set Fabio Luisi opts for some quick tempos that at times magnify the drama, but more often just make it go by, unnoticed. His narrator, William Kendall, is good in a big sort of way, but the matronly Mary of Nadja Michael is out of place. His orchestra and choir play and sing well enough, and the trio for two flutes and harp is hauntingly lovely, but overall this set is not in the same league as either Gardiner’s or Herreweghe’s.
