These youthful Masses, composed between 1768 and 1775, are among Mozart’s most concise – K65, in particular, is a Missa brevis with a vengeance. Brevity was, of course, de rigueur in the Salzburg liturgy and we can hardly blame Mozart for rattling unceremoniously through the long texts of the Gloria and Credo. With minimal scope for musical development, much of the writing in the two earlier works, especially, is frankly perfunctory – the 12-year-old composer dutifully going through the motions. As so often in late-eighteenth-century Masses, the central mystery of the “Et incarnatus est – Crucifixus” prompts a more individual musical response; and the Benedictus of K65 is a touching little duet for soprano and alto soloists based, surprisingly, on a descending chromatic motif, a traditional trope of lamentation. For all the conventional bustle of their faster movements, the two later Masses are more varied in their textures (though, pace the booklet-note, elaborate counterpoint is still at a premium) and more memorable in their ideas. Both the settings of the Benedictus have the grace and airiness of eighteenth-century Austrian churches – the kind of music in Stravinsky’s mind when he wrote of Mozart’s Masses as “rococo-operatic sweets-of-sin”. But the high point in each work is the Agnus Dei, especially that of K194, with its harmonic poignancy and dramatic alternations of solo and chorus.
Just occasionally Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s direction can sound over-insistent – in, say, the Kyrie of K49, with its almost aggressive marcato articulation. But for the most part he chooses apt, mobile tempos, keeps the rhythms buoyant and characterizes vividly without betraying the music’s essential blitheness and innocence of spirit. The playing of the Concentus Musicus is typically polished and responsive and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir, with little to tax them here, do all that is asked of them. Both individually and in consort the soloists make the most of their limited opportunities, with delectable tone and phrasing from the two sopranos, Christine Schafer and Angela Maria Blasi.
The recorded balance is excellent, catching all of Harnoncourt’s sharply etched orchestral detail while giving ample presence to the choir.'