Voces Suaves and Michele Vannelli approach Carissimi’s “Historia di Jephte” with attentive care and a palpable sense of engagement: nothing is overstated, the unfolding of the narrative speaks for itself, and it is from this precision that the emotion arises. Composed in the 1640s, the work has never left the repertoire, admired up to Handel, who reworked its final chorus in his “Samson”. 
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The Historia di Jephte draws its power from a paradox: it is a liturgical work, written to replace the ordinary chants of the Mass on solemn feast days, and yet it unfolds with a theatricality that rivals the nascent opera of its time. Carissimi tells the story of the warrior Jephtha who, before battle against the Ammonites, makes the reckless vow to sacrifice to God the first creature to emerge from his house to greet him. It will be his only daughter. The dramatic reversal that follows, from military triumph to funereal lament, stands as one of the most devastating moments in all seventeenth-century music.
The decision to enrich the original scoring with violin parts borrowed from other Carissimi works says a great deal about the ambition of this reading by Michele Vannelli, who here directs the Basel vocal ensemble Voces Suaves. This practice, documented in Rome in the 1650s, gives the music a weight and a sense of breadth it would otherwise lack. The Plorate colles, carried by sopranos Mirjam Wernli and Christina Boner, reaches a quiet intensity that stops you in your tracks, and the closing chorus Plorate filii Israel, the very passage Handel quoted in his Samson, rings out with a grave, unadorned nobility that explains why this work never truly faded from memory.
Two five-voice motets by Carissimi frame Domenico Mazzocchi’s dialogue Cristo smarrito, a figure too often overlooked, though celebrated by Kircher as the inventor of the chromatic style. His miniature oratorio, on a text by Marino, with its Lament of the Blessed Virgin in tones more sensual than spiritual, brings an unexpected expressive depth to the programme. Recorded at the Martinskirche in Basel in a generous acoustic, this is one of the finest releases of the season.
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