Prom 67: Sunday 4th September at 7.00 p.m. (Beethoven's Missa Solemnis)

[mercia]

thanks JLW

[Chris Newman]

Thanks from me, Jayne. I have heard great things about JEG and Missa Solemnis. I must flex the plastic.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I have the Gardiner too, and it is a very fine performance. But that is largely due to the excellence of the conductor, soloists, choir and orchestra, rather than because it ticks various HIPP boxes.

I would also recommend VPO/Bohm.

[Roehre]

not knowing the work very well, can anyone recommend a recording? I've just been looking at a random selection on Spotify and there's a wide variety of timings e.g. for the Kyrie, Gardiner/Monterverdi Choir take 8'50", Klemperer & NewPhil. take 9'26" whilst Harnoncourt/Concentus Musicus take 12'12"

For me either Herreweghe (1995 Harmonia Mundi), Gardiner (1990 Archiv) or Giulini (1973 EMI)

[Tony Halstead]

Anybody heard the 1987 Hanover Band, Oslo Cathedral Choir, cond Terjy Kvam, on Nimbus?
I used to own it but it got lost (with about another 30 CDs!) in a house move over 10 years ago.
Can't remember much about it except a good choir, good soloists, fairly brisk tempos but a very blurry recorded sound with not much orchestral detail.

[aeolium]

For me, Bernstein and the Concertgebouw (1978, a DG recording of a live concert).

[Roehre]

For me, Bernstein and the Concertgebouw (1978, a DG recording of a live concert).

I attended one of the two concerts as well as the first two of the rehearsals. I was much impressed by the actual performance, but -I guess for that reason- I am a bit underwhelmed by the recording.
Its "original cast" would have included Gundula Janowitz, but Bernstein send her home after half an hour or so during the first rehearsal as she wasn't up to his standards (well, she had definitely not studied the score again, and her singing was horrible..)

[aeolium]

I was much impressed by the actual performance, but -I guess for that reason- I am a bit underwhelmed by the recording.

That's interesting, Roehre. Do you mean that the intensity of the live performance does not come across in the recording? It seems pretty powerful to me.
I didn't know that information about Janowitz. She had of course been a soloist in the Karajan recording with Wunderlich et al, so presumably she knew the score - was it just a matter of being underprepared or was she also unwell?

[Roehre]

That's interesting, Roehre. Do you mean that the intensity of the live performance does not come across in the recording? It seems pretty powerful to me.
I didn't know that information about Janowitz. She had of course been a soloist in the Karajan recording with Wunderlich et al, so presumably she knew the score - was it just a matter of being underprepared or was she also unwell?

Janowitz was definitely unprepared. If she would have been unwell, or suffering from a cold or something which affected her singing, I don't think Bernstein would have been that angry that many present were sitting there with cringing toes. (Does my memory serve me correctly that they haven't made any recording together after that incident?).

I agree that the recording is pretty powerful, but having heard it live something is lacking for me- despite the solists being great as is the Omroepkoor and the Concertgebouw orchestra playing its socks off. I don't know why.

[Prommer]

What is clear to me is that in a few short years (five?), we will no longer be hearing any performances such as Davis conjured on Sunday night. Forget HIP, the normal fabric of our choral traditions has been shifting for some time. Sure, we will have big forces arrayed such as for Elijah etc, but not grandly spacious, cirro-cumulative ones like this, to be meteorological for a moment. Why? No conductors around to impose or insist on this sort of vision of the great works. Also (more insidious) choirmasters who fear - or in some cases know - that their forces will be cruelly exposed by such an approach.

[gradus]

I too liked Davis's vision of a great work. It was splendid to hear a large choir, a sound that I grew up with and still enjoy. What a pity if Davis really is the only established conductor who performs great choral works with large amateur choirs. Let the People sing!

[cavatina]

Is there any evidence that Beethoven was religious in any conventional sense?

I don't think it matters, since he was obviously full of reverence for the spiritual. Why else would he spend years and years trying to think of the best way to express Frederich Schiller’s poem An Die Freude--as far back as 1793, when he was twenty-two years old? As someone once said, Beethoven's Ninth personifies nobility, optimism, and a world where all mankind is in the embrace of love and friendship...if that isn't indicative of a spiritual outlook on life, I don't know what is.

Whatever the merits of Missa Solemnis as a whole, Colin Davis certainly brought out passages of great beauty and tenderness...I thought the violin solo in the Benedictus was particularly moving.

[Curalach]

What is clear to me is that in a few short years (five?), we will no longer be hearing any performances such as Davis conjured on Sunday night. Forget HIP, the normal fabric of our choral traditions has been shifting for some time. Sure, we will have big forces arrayed such as for Elijah etc, but not grandly spacious, cirro-cumulative ones like this, to be meteorological for a moment. Why? No conductors around to impose or insist on this sort of vision of the great works. Also (more insidious) choirmasters who fear - or in some cases know - that their forces will be cruelly exposed by such an approach.

I don't know what evidence you have for your assertion but it is certainly not shared by conductors and choirmasters of my aquaintance, or indeed by me.

[Curalach]

What a pity if Davis really is the only established conductor who performs great choral works with large amateur choirs.

I think that is untrue.

[Chris Newman]

I too liked Davis's vision of a great work. It was splendid to hear a large choir, a sound that I grew up with and still enjoy. What a pity if Davis really is the only established conductor who performs great choral works with large amateur choirs. Let the People sing!

I think from the first night, the last night and on most Sundays at the Proms we have heard what gradus seems to miss.