Customer Reviews

Biber: Missa Salisburgenis /Musica Antiqua Koln * Goebel * Gabrieli Consort & Players * McCreesh

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am a little puzzled by the reviewers who cite bad engineering on this disk. The dynamic range is enourmous (particularly between the second track and the Kyrie) and the disk does demand equipment to keep up with it. This is one of the most magnificent recordings of 17th century music I have heard, far most exciting than an earlier recording of the same piece. Liner notes are outstanding. This is not music of psychological depth and penetration, but rather ceremonial music on the grandest possible scale, and remarkably moving, particularly in the contexts established in the informative essay in the notes. The final motet to St. Rupert, in particular, is hair-raising. If you like Gabrieli and the Monteverdi Vespers, you will love this. McCreech is arguably the finest interpreter of this material going. This one has a permanent place on my shelf!

The Missa Salisburgensis has most often been attributed to Biber, and it may very well be his, though it lacks some of the more playful and virtuosic turns of much of his other work (the wonderful Violin Sonatas for example). Nonetheless, this recording is a very enjoyable one, more jubilant than masterful. This is a great, bounding, (somtimes slobbery), puppy-dog of a piece, and the orchestration, playing, and singing are all enthusiastically wonderful.
From the opening of the Kyrie on the second track (the first track isn't even part of the Missa Salisburgensis and seems totally superfluous on this disc) Musica Antiqua Koln, and co. bombard you with wave after wave of sonic joy. The instruments blend extremely well, the choirs sing brightly and beautifully and are treated with sensitivity and respect by both conductor and engineer. Recording the piece on site in the cathedral has given it awesome presence and a particularly atmospheric quality; the horns and organs sound especially good. There is some concern with the engineering, as the dynamic range is all over the map (especially between tracks one and two), but if your system can handle the range, it enhances rather than detracts from the great sonics.
All in all, this piece is not remarkably profound music so don't buy it expecting a Bach Cantata (or the incomparable B-minor Mass), but it is the very definition of a "joyful noise."

This is a much better recording than some of the other reviewers have indicated. It is a difficult work to perform and some of the scoring is a little vague - the "hautbois", for instance, may or may not have been oboes. Perhaps Deutscher Schalmeien were required?

Paul McCreesh employs female sopranos and male altos - the earlier Collegium Aureum recording used boys. The countertenors do sound stronger and don't seem to run out of breath, but the female sopranos don't blend as well with the cornetti and other period instruments as the boys in the earlier recording. The soloists are generally good, although I think more voices should have been used in the ripieni.

The bass sackbut really makes its presence felt on the bass lines in several movements. The cornetts are played with beauty. The trumpet choir provide great weight to the sound and the two clarino soloists play with style and beauty. The recorder consort and two oboes do tend to disappear into the tuttis - they did in the earlier recording.

The instrumental interludes provide variety and enhance the sense of occasion. The Hymnus is very impressive and even a little wild.

The Missa Salisburgensis is a very detailed and rich work. I've been listening to it and studying the score for many years. I think it is a great piece of music and certainly a landmark in the Baroque repertoire.

There is a sublime moment, an Adagio, in fact, about seven minutes into the Credo in which all the choirs and instruments play very gently and passionately - the juggernaut is becalmed - it is a moment worthy of Mozart or Beethoven. The earlier Collegium Aureum DHM recording made the most of this poignant and beautiful moment. McCreesh almost misses it. However it there and, as I said, it does provide us with a very special and exquisitely expressive moments in this generally extroverted work.

When the basses sing with the trombones choir, we can hear an echo of the music of Schütz and Gabrieli, another beautiful moment.

I think I'll still be finding interesting little details in the Missa Salisburgensis many years from now. It is the musical equivalent of one of a great Baroque painting on the ceiling of a European cathedral.

I find myself agreeing in many ways with every reviewer. This is an uneven release; I think it's not up to Archiv standards in the matter of balance for one thing. I have a large system and I had to back off the bass some and emphasize the treble some and still found the lack of sibilants interfered with the choral sound. The words are committed to memory by now but I still want to hear those words clearly. I rarely have to move tone controls from the flat position and this is odd to find in Archive. Otherwise this is a huge pice of work!. I especially enjoyed the
"Agnus Dei" opening; the chorus sounds like they truly are calling a lamb to come to them and I found the idea endearing.
Paul Mac Creesh has a flair for these epic productions; I think of his reconstruction of the "Coronation of the Doge" in Venice with music from Gabrielli. Gigantic proportions well done. I play these things about once a year, they tend to overwhelm.

This is a baffling production. Interesting, often-striking music, well-performed, has been recorded so badly that I would simply like to know what happened. Amateur or local recordings, of the sort on display at regional churches proud of their choirs, generally are much better in quality than this--yet this is on Deutsche Grammophon Archiv, usually a dependable, high-quality label. I must stress that the problem is not with the performance, and the idea of such a recording is welcome--were it not for the work's interest and the quality of the performances, I would have rated it one-star. But the overall sound is that of a marching band in a gigantic gymnasium, interspersed with barely-audible voice lines. The crescendos distort, jar and annoy. Even a good car stereo cannot support these false, poorly-taken dynamics, and the sound fares little better on high-quality home speakers. Generally, I only review works I enjoy and wish to recommend--but the feeling of having been ripped-off by this slovenly engineering and production work drove me to write this review as a warning to others.

Salzburg has had a bad rap since the apotheosis of Mozart. He despised the place as a stiff-necked provincial backwater. A generation earlier, Salzburg was surely one of the greatest musical scenes of all time, with extravagant resources available to its episcopal court composers. Heinrich Biber has emerged very recently as everybody's favorite rediscovered Baroque master. Twenty years ago, there were just a couple of LPs of his violin sonatas, but now there are pages of listings of his choral as well as his chamber music. I'm planning to review three recently-acquired performances of very large-scale ceremonial music originally performed in Salzburg cathedral: 1. Biber, "Litaniae de Sancto Josepho", Cantus Colln & Concerto Palatino; 2. Biber, "Missa Alleluja", Gradus ad Parnassum & Concerto Palatino; 3. Biber, "Missa Salisburgensis", Gabrieli Consort & Musica Antiqua Koln.

Other reviewers have already rhapsodized about the immense beauty of Biber's Missa Saliburgensis... and raged against the acoustical inadequacy of the CD. I have to agree with both. Perhaps to hear this masterpiece as it should be heard, Archiv would need to supply a cathedral with the disk. Then you could walk from pillar to altar and hear the shifting relationships between the choirs (6 of them) and organs (4 of them). Each auditory vantage point would give you a different thrill. Alas, I've played this disk on very high quality equipment and found that my mind enjoyed it more than my ears. The separation gets submerged in the tremendous range of volume required to listen at all, from piano to fortissimo-forte. And you can't just turn it down to easy-listening volume; you have to shake in your chair. It works much better on high-quality noise-canceling headphones (ear buds won't serve) so that the architectural quality of the music is best appreciated.

A word on the performance per se: spectacular ensemble throughout! Fine singing by the soloists; extraordinary filagree from Reinhold Goebel and Florian Deuter, the fiddlers; lovely unexpected apparitions of oboes and recorders floating above the voices; heart-stopping clarinos and timpani. At times, in the choral mass movements, Paul McCreesh's tempi seem a trifle slower than I might set if I were so privileged as to conduct such magnificent musical forces.

Conclusion: Five stars despite technological weaknesses. This is one of the culminating musical monuments of all the Baroque, and you must hear it.

I've got all of McCreesh's/Gabrieli Consort's cds & I would say that this is one of my favourites. (the other is Music for the Duke of Lerma) Yes, after the first track I have to turn my stereo down, but other than that I don't have a problem with this recording. I think it goes from quiet to loud so dramatically because one moment only a couple singers will be singing & then suddenly... all in! The playing is characteristically excellent, as I would expect from McCreesh & Goebel (& some members of the Tallis Scholars & other very good choirs). I've never heard anything quite like this... I've got stuff with drums/trumpets (Beethoven's 9th, Bach B Minor Mass, etc) but nothing seems to have so much loud, gratuitous, random blasting! & when they play loud I mean I always get the feeling that they're simply trying to play as loud as they possibly can, and everything else is secondary lol. Other works have some, but not to this extent. Every part of the mass (not the sonatas) is just over the top. My favourite parts are definitely the first 2:00 of the Sanctus and the 30 second march at the beginning of the Benedictus (~4:00 in track 7).

Close your eyes and enjoy the gradiose heights, the monumental spaces and the sublime quiet moments. The emotional range in this opus goes from the beautiful and lamentful duet between the bass and tenors in the "Crucifixus" to the majestic march prior to the "Benedictus". If that doesn't make you feel like you are rising to heaven, nothing will. Not to mention that there are enough fanfares in this recording to fill the heart of a "Heavy Metal" aficionado with delight.(I always say that Bach Toccatas are REAL Heavy Metal). Do yourself a favor and give this little known jewel a try.

If you buy this recording, you'd better love the performance because the engineering is truly dreadful. It really is the most poorly engineered classical recording I've heard in the past 20 years. It completely lacks in clarity and intelligibility. It's as if they recorded with a single microphone, in a hallway, around the corner. The balance is poor between instruments and the organ. Perhaps if you were standing outside the church doors it might sound like this. Other than that, what's not to like?

For reasons unknown I was not familiar with Biber and his work in the late Baroque, so when a local FM announcer, without warning, played the Gloria from this mass I was completely gob-smacked. Spectacular!

Written as it was [in 1682] to celebrate the opening of the new Salzberg cathedral, and coincidently the 1100th aniversary of the conversion to Christianity of that city, it is a work on a giant scale. This partially explains the use of two major period music groups ot complete the recording - Paul McCreesh and the Gabrielli Consort in cooperation with Rienhard Goebel and Musica Antiqua Cologne.

It is almost overwhelming to hear, and presumably there won't be many recordings of such a large work. The performers manage to convey the celebratory nature of the work, but listeners should note that those who find massed brass instruments tiring may not relate to this piece - it is quite dominated by those instruments as one might expect given its purpose.

One other slight misgiving is the uneven volume levels in the recording, ranging from the almost inaudible to the "wall of sound". I suspect the engineers may have been tempted to twiddle the sliders too much.

It was recorded in an English abbey, so it's difficult to imagine why that would have been necessary.

That said it is a great performance by proven musicians and certainly conveys the impact the original performance must have had on the citizens of that great European city in 1682.


Biber: Missa Salisburgenis /Musica Antiqua Koln * Goebel * Gabrieli Consort & Players * McCreesh