As the yellowing Novello scores in many a second-hand music shop testify, the oratorio version of the Seven Last Words was something of a favourite with Victorian and Edwardian choral societies. Nowadays, especially on disc, it is far eclipsed by the arrangement for string quartet, while the original orchestral version remains the least known of all—a situation EMI could help rectify by reissuing the fine Marriner/ASMF recording (4/78—nla). Though the orchestral original is in some ways the most rewarding, the choral version, made by Haydn in 1795-6, just after his second London visit, is an essential work for any true Haydn lover, above all for the extraordinarily bleak interlude for wind band (including trombones and double bassoon) which the composer inserted between the fourth and fifth Words.
Over the years I've enjoyed Harnoncourt's operatic and choral recordings more consistently than his purely orchestral discs, where his highly dramatic, gestural manner can lead to exaggeration and gratuitous point-making. And this new version of the Seven Last Words strikes me as one of the finest things he has done with the Arnold Schonberg Choir (his favoured choral group) and his own period-instrument band. The D minor instrumental introduction sets the tone: lacerating dotted rhythms, stinging sforzando accents and violent fortissimo eruptions, with the horns braying balefully through the texture. If you regard this introduction as essentially impersonal, monumental music then think again: in Harnoncourt's hands the cruelty and pity of the scene are palpable.
Throughout the seven choral Words Harnoncourt's response to the music's chromatic anguish is more intense and disturbing than in any performance I have heard: in the climax to No. 1, for instance, or in No. 5 at 1'08''ff, where the vocal and instrumental bass contorts in agony beneath the flagellatory quavers of the violins. Yet the intensity never seems strained or self-consciously applied, as it can do in some other Harnoncourt performances. At the other end of the spectrum, he brings a wonderful serenity and breadth of phrase to the vision of Paradise in No. 2, and realizes all the supplicatory tenderness and poignancy of No. 3. Dynamic contrasts, as always with Harnoncourt, are uncommonly vivid; and in every one of the Words he dares a truly slow, searching tempo, never seeking specious variety by taking some of the movements at a flowing Andante (Nos. 1, 5 and 7 are frequent sufferers in this regard). Only in No. 6 did I question Harnoncourt's choice of tempo: here the exceptionally slow pacing and, particularly in the development, the reluctance to sustain the pervasive minims for their whole length sometimes produce a distinctly halting effect.
Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus make you keenly aware of the subtlety, resource and sheer power of Haydn's orchestral scoring, with the period instruments bringing out the full asperity of the wind-band interlude (and overcoming with ease the extreme difficulties of tuning); and, predictably, the final Earthquake, which can sound like the roaring of a mouse in the quartet version, makes a spectacular effect here, aided by the hard-sticked timpani and the rasping panoply of brass. The mixed-voiced Arnold Schonberg Choir, topped by a shining soprano line, are a precise, flexible and superbly responsive body, though like the soloists, led by the plangent if slightly fragile-toned Inge Nielsen, they suffer somewhat in the recorded balance. But as a passionate, unflinching performance of Haydn's most neglected choral masterpiece this will not quickly be bettered, and can be commended even to those who might normally resist Harnoncourt's individual and dramatic music-making.'