***1/2 Anonymous 4

LEGENDS OF ST. NICHOLAS

(Harmonia Mundi)

Anonymous 4 have collected what they could find of liturgical music celebrating St. Nicholas and augmented the original material with their own plainchant settings of hagiographic narrative, and it's all packaged by Harmonia Mundi in a handsomely illustrated set. The four women who make up Anonymous 4 (Ruth Cunningham, Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer, Johanna Maria Rose) sing with beautifully tuned and blended voices, and they make a point of arranging the material with as much musical variety as possible -- so the timeless, floating, unison responsory Confessor dei Nicholaus is followed by the comparatively lively, ornate, melismatic, three-voice conductus Cantu mirro, summo laude. Devotees of chant will love the album. Those of us who find this music too unvaried will feel it's too much of a good thing. A little goes a long way.

-- Ellen Pfeifer