Mozart: Messe KV 427 c-moll "Große Messe" / Diana Damrau, Juliane Banse, Lothar Odinius, Markus Marquardt, Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart, … – Tonträger gebraucht kaufen

wie neu

77 Min.

2005

CD

120 g

Album: NEU und EINGESCHWEISST (OVP). STILL SEALED

Mozart: Mass In C Minor / Rilling, Banse, Et Al

Release Date: 01/10/2006
Label: Hänssler Classic Catalog #: 98227 Spars Code: DDD
Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Performer: Juliane Banse, Diana Damrau, Lothar Odinius, Markus Marquardt
Conductor: Helmuth Rilling
Orchestra/Ensemble: Stuttgart Bach Collegium, Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart
Number of Discs: 1
Recorded in: Stereo
Length: 1 Hours 17 Mins.


Works on This Recording

1. Mass in C minor, K 427 (417a) "Great" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Performer: Juliane Banse (Soprano), Diana Damrau (Soprano), Lothar Odinius (Tenor),
Markus Marquardt (Bass)
Conductor: Helmuth Rilling
Orchestra/Ensemble: Stuttgart Bach Collegium, Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart
Period: Classical
Written: 1782-1783; Vienna, Austria
Length: 76 Minutes 33 Secs.
Notes: Arranger: Robert Levin.


Notes and Editorial Reviews

Zachary Lewis in Time Out Chicago: "Thanks to Amadeus, everyone knows Mozart died with pen in hand. But the Requiem isn´t the only thing Mozart left unfinished. He also wrote little more than sketches for much of this great C minor Mass of 1783. In this 250th-birthday year comes this new recording of the Mass completed by scholar and pianist Robert Levin, who´s also finishes the Requiem.

Besides the Mass most listeners know and love, the recording includes nearly 25 minutes of music absent from the version traditionally performed today. Much of the new material fills out the Credo for which Mozart only drafted suggestions. Featured here are a dark, formally developed fugue on Crucifixus, with vocal soloists; a jubilant Et Resurrexit with brass; a strangely perky tenor aria for Et in Spiritum Sanctum; Et Unam Sanctam, a short declamation for chorus; and Et Vitam Venturi, a chorus developing a boldly profiled theme toward a rousing Amen. Levin´s version ends with an exquisite Agnus Dei aria for soprano soloist, tenderly performed by Juliane Banse, culminating in an energetic Dona Nobis Pacem. Mozart fans long accustomed to the regular version are likely to find the additions jarring and possibly not cohesive. Still, it´s hard to fault Levin´s research (explained at welcome length in the ample program notes), and the projects implications are fascinating to consider."

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Mozart not only left this Mass incomplete in 1783, with the scoring unfinished and lacking the last half of the Credo and the entire Agnus Dei, but he effectively abandoned it by reworking the Kyrie and Gloria for the cantata Davidde penitente, K 469, two years later. In 1901, Alois Schmitt published the Mass with the missing sections filled in from several earlier Mozart Masses and the Agnus Dei fitted to the music of the Kyrie. It has usually been recorded in its incomplete form, although Bernhard Paumgartner drew on the Mass, K 262, to complete the Credo and followed Schmitt's example for the Agnus Dei, an edition that Rudolf Moralt recorded (Epic SC 6009). John Eliot Gardiner revised Schmitt's orchestration of parts of the Credo but omitted the missing movements (12:4). Richard Maunder simply edited what Mozart left in sketchy form for Christopher Hogwood's version (14:2), as H. C. Robbins Landon had done earlier for Neville Marriner's recording issued in 1979 and Raymond Leppard (or someone else) had done for his recording issued in 1974.

Rilling has already recorded the Mass in a score “reconstructed and completed” by Helmut Edel, but that “completion” did not go beyond filling out the scoring of the movements sketched by Mozart, as Maunder and Robbins Landon had done. Rilling coupled it with the first recording of Robert D. Levin's reconstruction of the Requiem (16:2). Now Rilling has tackled the Mass again, and for this version Levin has completed the entire Mass. In a detailed description of his study of Mozart's sketches of the period, he provides an account of his approach to an admittedly daunting effort. The result is far removed from any previous “reconstruction/completion” that we have heard. It is Levin's idea of what Mozart might have intended for a complete Mass, and it goes far beyond any previous editor's modifications. It is a totally new way of understanding Mozart's intentions, and it requires a good deal of faith in Levin's admittedly keen grasp of Mozartean style.

The soloists that Rilling has chosen are superb, and the chorus and orchestra that he founded (in 1954 and 1965 respectively) respond with the assurance that we have heard many times before. While Rilling and Levin each furnish a note for the booklet, a Web address is given for further information. The recording was made during a pair of performances in Stuttgart last spring. While Levin will admit that this is a hypothetical realization of what might have been Mozart's intentions, based on fragments of sketches, it is well worth hearing. Since most other recordings fill in Mozart's incomplete scoring of the Credo and Sanctus, Levin's attempt to do this and more is at least as worthy of attention as any of them. Listen for yourself.

FANFARE: J. F. Weber

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AllMusic Review by Uncle Dave Lewis [-]
Although you would never know it from the extent to which it has been recorded, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Great Mass" in C minor comes down to us incomplete and represents one of his most problematic scores. The two principal scores in which the music is found, namely Mozart's manuscript and a set of parts for a 1783 performance of the piece, have contradictory elements. Aloïs Schmitt of publishing house Breitkopf & Härtel cobbled together a performing version in 1901 ending in the "Benedictus," which has become the standard. Though some second-opinion editions have come along in the meantime, musicologist Robert Levin has sourced original Mozart sketch pages relating to this work that have not been properly understood in the past in creating this new, 2004 edition of the C minor Mass. In it, Levin has managed to bring forward a complete liturgical mass setting of the kind Mozart likely intended for this work, running nearly a half an hour longer than most other versions.

While that is great news for fans of the "Great" C minor Mass, does longer, in this case, mean "better?" Good question, but first let us survey the performance, which is really quite good. Helmuth Rilling clearly embraces this Levin realization as though it were the original work, infusing it with a sense of conviction and a grave seriousness while managing to avoid sterility or pompousness. The Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart is excellent throughout, and the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart performs the orchestral parts on modern instruments with a typically Mozartian brio and verve. The soloists are good, but it is second soprano Juliane Banse who carries away the top honors here. This Hänssler Classic offering is a very well made recording, though it could stand to be more powerful in louder movements.

Moreover, to Levin's handiwork? Although the C minor Mass is a "fragment," it is not very "fragmentary." Even in the standard 1901 edition, it runs about 50 minutes, and the work has attained more of a status as something heard, rather than for use in a service. While Levin has brought to it liturgical integrity, the work in its familiar form has the virtue of concision, whereas the new edition gets bogged down in the long series of short, reconstructed movements that make up the "Credo." Nonetheless, musicologists have fans also, and some will not be able to resist the new edition. There is no reason, ultimately, why they should, as Rilling's Mozart/Levin: Mass in C minor is, at its base, a very good performance that does the work justice, without regard to the form in which it is presented.

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Rechtzeitig zum Mozartjahr 2006 präsentiert hänssler Classic die Weltersteinspielung Mozarts großer c-Moll-Messe. Nach Mozarts Tod gingen die vollständigen Handschriften und Stimmen verloren. Für die Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart hat der Musikforscher Robert Levin nun eine vervollständigte Neufassung erarbeitet. Dieses herausragende Ereignis zum Mozartjahr 2006 wird von Fachleuten und Kritikern überschwänglich gelobt.

Rezensionen

Fanfare: »Sehr hörenswert!«

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