Prom 4 (19.07.20) Missa Solemnis 9.00 p.m.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Finding the terror alongside the spiritual awe, the questioning doubt as well as the faith, Beethoven’s mighty Missa solemnis is a work of visceral power – a public statement of intensely private belief. ‘From the heart – may it return to the heart!,’ the composer wrote at the top of a score that stretched the proportions and ambitions of the orchestral Mass to new limits.

A work close to Harnoncourt’s heart, the Missa solemnis was also the work he conducted in his final public performance before retiring in December 2015. Experience the raw intensity of his account here with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Arnold Schoenberg Choir at the 1998 BBC Proms.

Beethoven: Missa solemnis

Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Arnold Schoenberg Choir
Ruth Ziesak (soprano)
Bernarda Fink (alto)
Herbert Lippert (tenor)
Neal Davies (bass)
Nikolous Harnoncourt (conductor)

(From BBC Proms 1998, 11 September)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

22 years old, this one. Does anyone remember it?

[gradus]

22 years old, this one. Does anyone remember it?

Yes but I can't recall anything about the performance.
It's one of those works where a particular performance affected me so much that I've never found it's equal and for me that's Klemperer's recording.

[gurnemanz]

A work that means a lot to me. I can't recall the Prom mentioned but may well have listened. I think I've seen it three times at the Proms. My first one was with Jochum in 1970 and I went again the next year when they did it in the rare Prom venue of Westminster Cathedral with Colin Davis. The last one was for the very impressive John Eliot Gardiner late evening Prom performance in 2014. I remember Lucy Crowe took part while heavily pregnant. I believe she gave birth only a few days later.

We saw Harnoncourt in the work at the Barbican in 2012. A memorable performance and occasion - he received the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal and gave a short speech.

[Petrushka]

A work that means a lot to me. I can't recall the Prom mentioned but may well have listened. I think I've seen it three times at the Proms. My first one was with Jochum in 1970 and I went again the next year when they did it in the rare Prom venue of Westminster Cathedral with Colin Davis. The last one was for the very impressive John Eliot Gardiner late evening Prom performance in 2014. I remember Lucy Crowe took part while heavily pregnant. I believe she gave birth only a few days later.

We saw Harnoncourt in the work at the Barbican in 2012. A memorable performance and occasion - he received the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal and gave a short speech.

It's a work that means a lot to me as well but, like gurnemanz, I've no recollection of this one at all. I attended two previous Prom outings of the Missa, from Solti and Haitink, both unforgettable and either of them would have been well worth a TV repeat as both were live television broadcasts.

[bluestateprommer]

Finally caught up with this retrospective Prom. Once past Tom Service's OTT gushing (if sincere and heartfelt, though nonetheless aurally wearisome) intro, a very fine reading indeed of LvB's Missa solemnis. I've not heard either of Harnoncourt's commercial CDs or seen the Concertgebouw DVD, so I had nothing against which to compare from him. The one obvious "Harnoncourtism" came towards the end, where he made the militaristic intrusions sound more disruptive against the "Dona nobis pacem" pleading, in a good way, than I can ever recall hearing, in either a recording or the few times that I've heard it live.

As gurnemanz mentioned NH's 2012 concert in London of the same work, the pre-music proceedings feature an excerpt from a 2012 interview around the time of that concert between Harnoncourt and Suzy Klein.