HAYDN: Theresa Mass in B-flat; Mass in Time of War in C – Soloists/ Oregon Bach Festival Chorus and Orchestra/ Gachinger Kantorei Stuttgart/ Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra/ Helmuth Rilling, conductor – Hanssler

by | Jul 1, 2008 | Classical CD Reviews | 0 comments

HAYDN: Theresa Mass in B-flat; Mass in Time of War in C – Simona Saturova, Soprano/ Roxana Contantinescu, alto/ Corby Welch/ Yorck Felix Speer, bass/ Ruth Ziesak, soprano/ Ingeborg Danz, alto/ Christoph Pregardien, tenor/ Michel Brodard, bass/ Oregon Bach Festival Chorus and Orchestra/ Gachinger Kantorei Stuttgart/ Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra/ Helmuth Rilling, conductor – Hanssler 98.508, 75:26 **** [Distr. by Allegro]:

The masses of Joseph Haydn are among the greatest ever written, and among the last things he ever did. Why, we might ask, did he turn to these pieces at this time, when he had shown little penchant for such writing earlier in his life? We do know he was an extremely religious man, but perhaps felt little drawn to what was for the most part a rather constricted and formal form. Many different “reforms” had been put into place over the years that made such composition the exclusive purview of specialists, and one only has to think of Mozart and the issues he had with his own sacred music. But the wife of Haydn’s long time employer, Nicholas II, named the Princess Marie Esterhazy, was to be the catalyst for the creation of these superb symphonic utterances of his last years. Five of the six were written for her name-days. Haydn took the genre to himself, and even he was not above criticism—the war-like thumping of the timpani in the “Agnus Dei” of his Mass in the Time of War drew heavy fire itself from those who thought the church was being turned into a circus. And in fact, the name was most likely given later, even though wars were stirring when the composer wrote it, there was no sense of writing something specifically for these events.

The Theresienmesse may indeed have been commissioned by the star-crossed empress; she did know Haydn’s music and was a fan, having sung some of his solo parts, but we cannot be sure that she was really behind the commissioning of this piece. Nevertheless, it makes for a great title, and the music is some of the sweetest and most lyrical the composer ever penned. No Haydn collection worth its name can be without all six of these seminal creations.

The question is then whether this disc would fit the bill for a one-and-only copy of these two works. I think it might. Though the recordings are 15 years separated (Marie is 2007, War is 1992), and the two performing groups 4000 miles apart, Rilling has always been able to get a very consistent sound no matter where he was conducting; so it is here. And the sound, astonishingly enough, is as they were both recorded at the same time and place! It is very clear and clean, somewhat close but not obtrusively so. The performances are excellent. I don’t think one wants to be without Bernstein’s War, either on Philips or Sony. (That famous “protest” concert given in the National Cathedral the same day the Philadelphia Orchestra was playing the inauguration of Richard Nixon in 1972—and Bernstein was a great Haydn conductor). But the Marie is very good indeed – and even though John Eliot Gardiner recently gave us some smartly-played readings, and Richard Hickox too – these two issues are nicely done and very satisfying.

— Steven Ritter

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