Customer Reviews

Bach: B Minor Mass

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have worn out my vinyl records of this performance. The soloists are superb, particularly Adele Addison who did not record much after this. The Shaw Choral was composed of professionals and sounds it. Shaw has his usual rhythmic and tonal control -- and the result is magic.

I understand that this recording sounds a little muddy, but what do you expect?! ITS A HISTORIC RECORDING! Robert Shaw and Company recorded this album in 1960. It was THE FIRST AND ONLY recording of the B Minor Mass in the USA, for years! There is a reason why it won th 1960 Grammy Award for Best Choral Recording. Robert Shaw and company went all over the country in 1960 performing this piece in Farm Houses and School Gyms. Bringing this piece of Baroque Mastery to the numberless masses. Accounts of the day talk about people waiting in lines for 10 to 12 hours to hear this group perform THIS PIECE! Dogging this recording for bad recording practices is ok. I will give you that the sound is not crystal clear. But the performance of Chours, Soloist and Orchestra are OUTSTANDING. Know why this piece and this recording had the praise and acclades it had for so long. Own this CD and Own a Piece of History!

Normally, the music of Bach would warrant a rating of no less that five stars. However, Robert Shaw was able to over interpret and change Bach's greatest choral work to the point that it sounds Romantic. The articulations throughout are much too legato, in both the chorus and the orchestra, and the broad ritards at the end of each and every movement get tiresome. In fact, the tempos during the entire Mass are a bit too slow. In addition to this, Shaw takes the liberty of changing several chorale sections to small vocal ensembles sections. He obviuosly does this for dynamic contrast, but it is uncharateristic. The solo work however, is beautiful. Overall, the effect is somewhat enjoyable, but if you are looking for a recording that is performed in a true Baroque style, you will want to look elsewhere.

I recently read a new music thriller which jumps in time from Bach to Mozart to Beethoven to Wagner to Mahler to Webern, "The Last Cantata" by Philippe Delelis, Toby Press 2000, and was most intrigued with the author's use of Bach's numerology, particularly with regard to this Mass and the Mozart Requiem. So I went to play the Mass, and found I didn't have a copy. I then ordered this Mass from amazon, and played it immediately when I received it. The Mass is superb, with no hesitation. The performers and Robert Shaw, the Director, are all that can be asked for.

Yet the recording is most disappointing due to the Red Seal mastering and recording. The sound is totally mushy, as if I had recorded this as a bootleg with a hand cassette recorder. The orchestra mikes predominate, until the mix jacks up the soloists, and the chorus is left in the middle muddle.

Now I understand why Shaw left RCA for Telarc. Telarc knows how to record and master, and RCA screws up. It wasn't always that way: RCA knew how to record Strauss: "Also Spake zarathustra" in the early LP days. But they sure crucified Shaw with this recording. Res Ipsa Loquitur.

This is an amazing recording. I want to say that I also own Klemperer and Gardiner's "definitive" recordings, one being ultra-romantic, the other being the polar opposite period performance. Both are fantastic in their own way; however, after a while with only "extremes" I felt I needed a blend. I knew just where to go. I bought this fantastic recording off Amazon, and was not disappointed. It does not have the blazing speed of Gardiner's recording, yet is never lethargic in places (as one could easily say about Klemperers). Overall, the tempos are perfect, with a mastery blend of quickness in the faster sections, and restrained romanticism in the slower ones. I also believe that this version surpasses Shaw's later, more restrained, 1990 version with Telarc; for while the latter recording's sonics are better, the earlier recording makes up for its technological flaws (which are not bad at all - it is Living Stereo) with intensity and spontaneity. Will I stop listing to Gardiner's or Klemperer's conceptions now that I have found my blend? - No, they are both brilliant in their own way, and "definitive" seems to be a fitting adjective for the beauty contained within each set. However, the B Minor Mass is one of the supreme achievements of Western music, and to have but one interpretation is doing yourself a great injustice. Robert Shaw's conception of Bach's masterpiece is just what I wanted, and this testament should be in every music lover's collection.

From the opening "Kyrie Eleison", which you will feel down to your feet, to the closing "Dona Nobis Pacem" this CD will blow
your mind. I own the original LP which I happened to find at a used book store in South Philly for $7.00! You MUST play this
as loud as possible. It is earth shatteringly beautiful, sensitive, and leaves me breathless every time I listen to it.
Lucky for you this is on CD! I'm sending a copy to my mother right now!
ENJOY!!!!!

I'm so happy this made it to CD, I'll park it next to my recordings of Beecham's Messiah, Oistrach's Bach violin concerti, Lehmann's Water Music, and Klemperer's Brandenburgs!

For too many years Baroque music was considered to be busy counterpoint-heavy, knitting-machine stuff. It had an undeserved bad rep similar to what Schoenberg's music has had now for a long while. Too intellectual, too academic, too remote.

By the middle of the Twentieth Century (The Age of Reason) some who saw great merit, commercial or otherwise, in Baroque music presented it to the public in a way that seemed perfectly legitimate, a way that, however, and in actuality, matched more the mood of the time and the needs of the market. You see, contemporary music of that era was already way too intellectual and academic, and "Romantic" music had fallen into disfavor since WWI. In 1960 only retired and somewhat suspect Teutons enjoyed the excesses of Wagner and Strauss, usually while wearing battered old helmets.

A romanticized Baroque was the perfect option, permitting lush romanticism within the context of an acceptable and rigorously worked-out intellectualized framework. The music was smart, stylish, and "cool" in a Stravinsky/Modern Jazz Quartet sort of way while still managing to be somewhat languorous and sexy. By the Seventies of course everyone was shooting for "historical accuracy," in other words trying to make Baroque music sound like Phil Glass and Steve Reich-like Rock and Roll.

Nobody cares to admit that we really have no idea how this music is supposed to sound. Doctorates are built on delusions about this subject. We can be dead certain that if some scholar finds out exactly how it's supposed to sound and that sound is, by modern standards, pretty repulsive, we won't see a big drive to alter currently accepted performance practices. Get my point? Right now we're seeing a backlash against period instrument performances--they sound awful--so we're back to modern instruments to give the music more of a contemporary Alternative Music sound.

So what you have here with this recording is the 1960 idea of what life was like in 1735 or so. If you think about that for a minute it's an absurdity and unfortunately one that only becomes obvious to its perpetrators after a few years have slid by. Humility takes time and we hep cats of 2005 will eventually realize that all our smug certainties, like those of our ancestors, were only so much spin and wind. Anyway, this is an absolutely 100% certifiably historically accurate 1961 performance of Bach. It's really quite beautiful by any standards-Bach might have even liked it, maybe even Mozart and Schoenberg-and it's quite moving. To this day it's about the only Mass in B Minor recording that I can actually relax to and enjoy. More recent ones sound too, well, artsy and Punkish, kind of pre-9/11. Can't recommend it enough!

With its slower tempi and very legato playing and large forces, this does not sound at all like Bach, but rather something from Mozart's pen, or perhaps even later into the romantic period.

The sound is pretty good, but it's not at all faithful to Bach or the Baroque. In this case the mass is better in the hands of a period ensemble like Gardiner's -- Shaw's version is just too ponderous and loses much of the light and brisk quality of BAroque era music.

Forgive me if I did not catch the irony, but on first appearance the previous review (by wilbod) presents an intense philosophical discourse on the rediculousness and intellectual dishonesty in claiming one can "know" how baroque music was performed in its day. Yet it is followed by the claim that this recording is somehow "100% historically accurate!"

In actuality, no artist or period existed in a vaccum. Its philosophical, theological, and cultural context determined its "style." Now while it is quite true that we have no samples of playing from the baroque period, we have the intellectual and theological framework in which it was birthed. We also have written descriptions (by musicians and musicologists as well as common fans of music) describing the texture and the sound in very specific terms. All those PhD's that wilbod condemns are not idiots, and their claims about discovering authentic aesthetics are not just coming from the air...

Anyway...any conductor that tries to infuse this music with Romantic sensibility is committing a crime. The theological degredation that happened between the Baroque and Romantic periods is shocking and to think these forms are similar or can co-exist in a single work let alone the classification of "classical music" is saying that light and darkness co-exist in a single room. This is madness.

Of course, Bach's music is always soothing to the soul and mind. Studies show that it is possible both Bach and Mozart's music aid in brain development in young children. So why not get this CD and renew your musical spirit? The music in this cd is Bach at his best.