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GRAMOPHONE (12 /2013)
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Reviewer: Richard
Wigmore
Eight singers from
The Sixteen for Bach’s ‘borrowed’ Masses
Like the Christmas Oratorio, Bach’s four settings of the Kyrie
and Gloria for the Lutheran liturgy are largely ‘parodied’ from
existing works. Puritanical 19th-century scholars threw up their hands. But
as a supremely practical musician, Bach saw a more durable home for music
whose performance would necessarily be limited. For the noble Kyrie
of the F major Mass he adapted a much earlier Kyrie setting.
Elsewhere he parodied assorted cantata movements, carefully adapting them to
the Mass texts. If the minor mode slightly mutes the jubilation of the G
minor Mass’s ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ (how many other minor-mode Glorias can
you think of?), both Masses offer a fund of glorious music.
Harry Christophers shrewdly pairs
two of the Masses with Cantata No 102 – Lutheranism at its most self-laceratingly
penitential – which Bach drew on for the Kyrie of the G minor Mass and
the ‘Qui tollis’ and ‘Quoniam’ of the F major. As in his performances in
London’s King’s Place, he uses two voices to a part in the choruses and shares
the solos democratically. Occasionally the sopranos are overwhelmed in the
contrapuntal melee. In the Kyrie of the F major Mass, the cantus firmus
on oboes and horns could have rung out more. But the freshness, agility and
precision of the performances, animated by Christophers’s buoyant direction, are
a constant pleasure. The rollicking coloratura of the F major’s ‘Gloria in
excelsis Deo’ can rarely have danced so infectiously. If the two countertenors
and the mellow bass of Ben Davies are the pick of the soloists, all have clean,
youthful voices and phrase thoughtfully. On a pair of Chandos discs, a quartet
of singers accompanied by the Purcell Quartet adopt an even more minimalist
approach to the Masses. If some of the solo singing there has more
individuality, I prefer Christophers’s two-to-a-part solution and the greater
range of expression he brings to the choruses.
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