Beethoven's Mass in C
Beethoven's Mass in C
Gramophone Choice
Mass in C. Ah! perfido, Op 65. Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt, Op 112
Charlotte Margiono (sop) Catherine Robbin (mez) William Kendall (ten) Alastair Miles (bar) Monteverdi Choir; Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique / Sir John Eliot Gardiner
Archiv 435 391-2AH (62' · DDD · T/t) Buy from Amazon
Gardiner’s genius is in evidence here. The Kyrie eleison is a plea for mercy but its opening bars speak of comfort: there’s almost the simple good faith of a quiet, very Germanic carol about them. Gardiner sets a mood of deliberate seriousness, with lowered period pitch and a tempo rather slower than that suggested by Beethoven’s direction: Andante con moto, assai vivace, quasi allegretto ma non troppo. He also appears to have encouraged the soloists, especially the soprano, to shape and shade the phrases, so intensifying the feeling of seriousness and deliberation. Happily, this policy prevails for only a short time, and to some extent the music itself goes out to meet it. As the second Kyrie (following the Christe) moves towards its climax, the fortissimo brings suspensions where the alto part grinds against the soprano, and then come sudden fortissimos with intense modulations and momentary discords, all of which are particularly vivid in this performance. What follows has the same exhilarating quality as that which was so applauded in Gardiner’s Missa solemnis and, just as he did there, Gardiner is constantly illuminating detail while maintaining an apparently easy natural rightness throughout.
Again, an outstanding contribution is made by the Monteverdi Choir. Splendidly athletic, for instance, are the leaps of a seventh in the fugal ‘Hosanna’. The tone-painting of Meeresstille finds them marvellously alert and vivid in articulation. Ah! perfido brings a similar sense of renewal: there isn’t even a momentary suspicion of concert routine, but rather as though it’s part of an exceptionally intense performance of Fidelio. Charlotte Margiono sings the angry passages with the concentration of a Schwarzkopf, and brings to those that are gentler-toned a special beauty of her own. Other soloists in the Mass sing well if without distinction. Distinction is certainly a word to use of the disc as a whole.
Additional Recommendation
Mass in C. Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt, Op 112. Elegischer Gesang, Op 118
Rebecca Evans (sop) Pamela Helen Stephen (mez) Mark Padmore (ten) Stephen Varcoe (bar) Collegium Musicum 90 / Richard Hickox
Chandos Chaconne CHAN0703 (56' · DDD · T/t) Buy from Amazon
Beethoven’s Mass in C, like Haydn’s late masterpieces and the Masses of Hummel, was written on commission from Prince Esterházy for the nameday of the Princess. Puzzlingly, Beethoven’s 1807 contribution was counted a failure: the prince described the music as ‘totally ridiculous’. Beethoven starts his setting more conventionally than Haydn did in his late Masses. Where Haydn brilliantly gave his Kyries a symphonic flavour, Beethoven is devotional in a simpler, more innocent style. That’s surely apt in a prayer for mercy, even if you note the Beethovenian modulations and dissonances, individual touches well brought out in Richard Hickox’s performance.
Hickox, with an excellent quartet of soloists, gives full-blooded performances that bring out the exuberance of the inspiration. Where Gardiner brings out the work’s drama with phenomenally crisp singing and playing, there’s an infectious joy to Hickox’s reading, in which, with a choir of 24 singers, a closer focus and a marginally more intimate acoustic, the words can be heard more clearly.
Throughout the liturgy one Beethoven took nothing on trust, thinking afresh rather than relying on convention, as when the Credo’s first eight bars are quiet before the full outburst of affirmation from the choir, and the setting of ‘Et resurrexit’ begins with a baritone solo, not with a choral or orchestral outburst. The setting of ‘passus’ just before it has extraordinary intensity, just it does in the later Missa solemnis. Hickox brings out such points with clarity, with period forces making the music sound not just more vital but more modern.
The Mass is coupled with the lovely Goethe setting Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt, and the Elegischer Gesang, written in a simple, homophonic style to commemorate the passing of a noble friend’s wife.
