MENDELSSOHN: Magnificat in D; Jesu meine Freude; Tue es Petrus, Op. 111; Wir glauben all an einem Gott; Gloria – Andrea Brown, soprano/ Monica Groop, alto/ Werner Gura, tenor/ Michael Volle, bass/ Stuttgart Chamber Choir/ German Chamber Philharmonic of Bremen/ Frieder Bernius, conductor – Carus multichannel SACD 83.216, 69:00 ***** [Distr. by Albany]:
Mr. Bernius has now reached the eighth volume of his estimable series devoted to the church music of Mendelssohn. There are truly some gems to be mined here, starting with the two pieces that take up most of the disc, the Magnificat and Gloria, from Vespers and Mass of the Roman rite respectively, chosen by the then 13-year old to demonstrate his prowess in contrapuntal skill. And what skill there is! Mozart himself could not equal the mysterious “Qui tollis” of the Mass, or manage the effortless sublimities found in the quadruple fugue that ends the Magnificat. Mendelssohn’s management of the orchestral resources is astonishing for one so young, as is the splendid choral work, What is missing here are arias—we do get soloists interspersed with the chorus, but I honestly didn’t miss the solo outings at all with music so remarkably pliant and finely-wrought as this.
It does seem odd that Mendelssohn, a Jew and Protestant convert, would choose Latin texts for his first major choral works, but the boy was inclined to pit his skill against tradition, and there was nothing more traditional than these Latin settings. When the year 1827 rolled around, the composer again turned to Rome for an echt-Catholic setting of the motet Tu es Petrus, surely the most Roman of all texts, and again surprising for such a dedicated and devout Lutheran. This time Mendelssohn announced that this was the first sacred composition of his that was worth publication, though many will disagree after hearing the other works on this disc. Here the composer hearkens back to the “stile antico” style of vocal counterpoint from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though his results touch on only a modicum of modality; the orchestral accompaniment sets the work apart as firmly in the composer’s century, a brilliant example of neo-classicism if ever there was one.
The remaining two pieces are also later ones, the Jesu meine Freude (1828) being modeled specifically on Bach, though Mendelssohn’s romantic proclivities shine through in every bar. His penultimate choral cantata Wir Glauben all an Einen Gott is a large setting taken—one of five—from Luther. This tripartite German Creed ends part 1 with a very fine choral fugue, the second for full orchestra, and finally a choral unison to conclude the piece.
Standards remain very high in this series, and I find this to be one of the most satisfying yet. SACD sound is exemplary, the performances matching the technology every inch of the way.
— Steven Ritter
