When I first heard Harnoncourt’s account of Franz Schmidt’s great oratorio I was most impressed. By the splendid choral sound, first of all: a big chorus, obviously deeply committed to the work (they gave it its premiere and have regularly sung it since) and in such really difficult passages as the ‘earthquake’ chorus and the ensuing fugue, or the section describing the Last Judgement they sing like virtuosos. Harnoncourt has an admirable team of soloists also, headed by Kurt Streit who, though his tone is occasionally a little strained at the top, really grows throughout this live performance until you can hear his horror as he describes the ‘pale horse whose name was Death’ and a shudder of awe as he contemplates ‘the second death, the lake of fire’. Harnoncourt himself is very good at providing the apocalyptic setting that Schmidt calls for: the sinister battlefield through which the few survivors of the rider of the pale horse stumble, the lean string sound that accompanies war in heaven. I was impressed, too, by the deathly hush of the final chorus, that reminder that a terrible judgement awaits ‘those by whom the Earth has been defiled’.
Unusually for a record reviewer, however, I have had a prolonged opportunity to get to know this performance better and to compare it in detail with Franz Welser-Most’s Gramophone Award-winning reading, and although that opportunity has not led to any lessening of respect for the qualities I have mentioned, it has made me less patient than I was with what now seem mannerisms on Harnoncourt’s part. I cannot see why almost every note in the first chorus of elders is accented, nor why the words of the ‘Thou art worthy’ chorus are so detached from each other. Much though I like the Singverein’s big sound, at least as Harnoncourt directs them they lack urgency and sheer pace at some crucial moments. Welser-Most provides both with his no less virtuoso but rather smaller chorus, and he is aided by a better-balanced recording than Teldec provide for Harnoncourt. Welser-Most’s soloists, too, are not one whit inferior; his tenor, Stig Anderson, though more robust than Streit, is not much less imaginative. Both performances are distinguished. I began by thinking them pretty evenly matched. I am now more impressed than ever by Welser-Most’s reading, slightly more disappointed than I was with Harnoncourt’s