Beethoven
Missa Solemnis
Lina Johnson (soprano), Olivia Vermeulen (mezzo-soprano), Martin Platz (tenor), Manuel Walser (bass); La Cappella Nacional de Catalunya; Le Concert des Nations/Jordi Savall
Alia Vox AVSA9956 75:15 mins
Is the Missa Solemnis the greatest opera Beethoven never wrote? Theatrical through and through, there’s something positively Promethean about its quest to reconcile the divine and the human. And like JS Bach’s equally all-encompassing B minor Mass, it’s more a personal statement writ large than a practical contribution to the liturgical repertoire – even though Op. 123 started life as a work to mark the consecration of Beethoven’s patron and pupil Archduke Rudolf as Archbishop of Olomouc. Considering it his greatest work to date, Beethoven famously inscribed ‘from the heart – may it return – to the heart’ ahead of the Kyrie, an injunction Jordi Savall has clearly heeded.
Nonetheless, the recording is a bit of a mixed bag. Both disturbed and disturbing, the Agnus Dei is beautifully paced as glowering disquiet is ambushed by terrifying military interjections; and the poised opening of the Sanctus is haunting, its ‘pleni sunt caeli’ bright and explosive, the Benedictus – with its sublime violin solo – ethereal. But, besieged by a reverberant acoustic and somewhat congested recording (the opening of the Gloria particularly so), it’s not always easy to follow Savall’s vision of the piece. The Kyrie is short on ‘presence’, the choral attack at the outset a little limp, and the responding soloists are unfavourably recessed in the sound picture. For all Savall’s manifold insights – foreshadowings of Brahms and Bruckner intrigue the ear – there are more consistently compelling period-instrument versions available – the last recording by Nikolaus Harnoncourt with Concentus Musicus Wien, and John Eliot Gardiner’s live second recording among them. Paul Riley