Bach: Mass in B Minor

Pierrette Alarie (Artist), Willi Boskovsky (Artist), Nan Merriman (Artist), Gustav Neidlinger (Artist), Leopold Simoneau (Artist), Johann Sebastian Bach (Composer), Hermann Scherchen (Conductor), Vienna State Opera Orchestra (Orchestra), Vienna Academy Chamber Choir (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Vienna Academy Chamber Choir
• Orchestra: Vienna State Opera Orchestra
• Conductor: Hermann Scherchen
• Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach
• Audio CD (May 14, 2002)
• SPARS Code: ADD
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Deutsche Grammophon
• ASIN: B000063DS8
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #412,491 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb version !, December 19, 2004

By 

Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bach: Mass in B Minor (Audio CD)

The Mass in B Minor is not only one of the monumental and unfathomable landmarks of Johan Sebastian Bach , but besides it 's one of the great works of Modern Civilization .
The Mass was submitted in July 1773 at Dresden with a humble request for an appointment as Court composer.
Bach knew to be lyric at the same time than dramatic when the text demanded it and the music requested it . His inspiration is well-aimed , without hesitations . You could establish a parallel Bach-Shakespeare since the infinite exploration in both genius of a feeling , of a psychological hue.
Is this a catholic Mass? The answer is no . It was an existing form of ritual in the Lutheran Church.
According to Karl Geiringer it curious the Mass in B Minor be called in that tonality . He argues the composition contains twelve movements in D major and only five in B minor . D is the tone of the jubilee Gloria and Credo so Resurrexit and Sanctus .
This recording is fundamental for any collector item .
Special mentions to Pierrette Alarie , soprano ; Leoplod Simoneau Tenor and Nan Merriman , Alto .
The magistral voices of The Vienna academy Chorus under the baton of Scherchen will give you a full description and gratifying moments with this excel work.
Thanks to Deutsche Gramophone for this special re-edition , since I have the previous release of the dissapeared label MCA.
I guess the sound must have been improved .

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great vocalist gets clobbered, August 2, 2009

By 

Theodore Shulman (NYC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bach: Mass in B Minor (Audio CD)

Gustav Neidlinger (PeaceBeUponHim) was one of the greatest athletic singing-actors of all time. He could have read you the news from across Broadway in rush hour. He sang with unmatched furor, density, and sulphur, as naturally as he spoke. He owned the roles of Alberich and Klingsor at Bayreuth from 1952 until 1967. At least sixteen different recorded performances of him playing these two roles are available.

He was the first singer of his generation to sing these roles with line and musicality rather than as sequences of grunts and bellowings. (Compare Alois Pernersorffer, Franz Andersson, Toni Blankenheim, Adolf Vogel). But he did this without losing the savagery, and every performance was spontaneous and different; he hammered different syllables and slid from note to note at different moments. His stage presence resembled Edward G. Robinson's screen-presence, the scruffy hyperenergetic malignant dwarf; his eyes gleamed with similar pleasure as he issued threats and humiliated his victims. He had a wide repetoire and besides all the lesser Wagner roles (and some of the greater ones like Hans Sachs and Amfortas), he recorded Mozart, Beethoven (Pizarro and Ode2Joy, BOTH on dvd), Strauss, Mussorsky, Orff, Smetena, Janacek, Massenet, and Millocker.

And, this B-minor Mass. Here he is obviously trying to sight-sing his music. He has no idea how much breath to budget for the various scales and runs. You can get away with this in his usual music--Wagner and other "conversational opera" tends to have long, single-climax phrases with obvious danger-zones and obvious places to breathe, especially the villians' parts--but not with Bach, who plays the singer like a pipe organ with an endless air-supply. You must plan your breathing days in advance, and review the plan for two hours before the concert. If you don't, you might as well be under water cos yer gonna drown.

Napoleon had his Waterloo, Mike Tyson had the Buster Douglas fight, and Gustav Neidlinger(PBUH) had this.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Comparison Time, February 8, 2010

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bach: Mass in B Minor (Audio CD)

This recording must have been made less than a decade after Bach's death. I remember it, and several of Hermann Scherchen's recordings of Bach cantatas, playing as background music in our family cave while my Dad and I 'dressed' the last Irish elk for roasting. I don't have this re-mastered CD, and I don't even have the original LPs any more; if I did have them, I certainly wouldn't rush to listen to them. But our beloved amazoo has provided 'samples, and I'm calling attention to them as examples of how Bach was done before the combination of musicological scholars and aesthetically intuitive performers -- the "historically informed performance" movement -- revolutionized Baroque music.

Understand, please, that there WAS a time when Scherchen was exciting to hear; my one-star for this recording is how I would rate it if it were a performance in 2010. It's growly and rumbly, with hordes of singers all canceling each other's timbre acoustically. The tuning of the singers - chorus and soloists - is atrocious. The orchestra is so turgid and murky that tuning scarcely matters. The tempi are dirge-like throughout. The soloists just don't keep up with the notes; their voices are too chest-heavy, their vibratos too 'stately', and their breathing/phrasing is ridiculous; in short, they absolutely don't have the vocal technique to sing this repertoire. They haven't done their scales; they wouldn't pass an audition for a community choir today. Yes, I might also have thought they sounded 'inspired with fervor', forty years ago, but now I feel mostly pity. Poor Gustav Neidlinger is especially abject; he simply didn't have the physical stuff to sing this music. There should be some sort of 'mercy killing' for performances as hopelessly antiquated as this one.