Mozart: Coronation Mass, Missa Brevis - Nethsingha, Gritton, Challenger, St. John's College Choir (2012)

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Mozart: Coronation Mass, Missa Brevis - Nethsingha, Gritton, Challenger, St. John's College Choir (2012)

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On this disc, the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge performs alongside four soloists and the period instrument ensemble St John’s Sinfonia. The tenor Sam Furness and bass George Humphreys both started their careers as Choral Scholars with this very choir. The mezzo-soprano Frances Bourne is in great demand on the concert platform and has sung with many of Europe’s leading conductors; the soprano Susan Gritton has amassed a vast discography that has earned her two Grammy nominations and includes, for Chandos, recordings of works by Haydn, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Vaughan Williams.

Mozart wrote the ‘Coronation’ Mass just two weeks into his appointment as Court Organist for the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. As it was first performed as part of the Easter liturgy of Salzburg Cathedral, perhaps ‘Paschal’ Mass would have been a more suitable title. However, the work achieved great renown after its performance at the Imperial Coronation in Prague, which took place nine months after Mozart’s death, and the name stuck. The opulence of the Gloria, in particular, is unmistakable, and the alternations between soloists and choir add drama to the text, which Mozart scored with operatic clarity. Here the choir forcefully praises and glorifies, while the soloists more intimately bless and worship.

Also on this disc is Susan Gritton’s first-ever recorded performance of Mozart’s dramatic solo cantata Exsultate jubilate, and a motet for the Feast of Corpus Christi, Ave verum corpus. Mozart’s Church Sonatas, which number seventeen in all, span a period of ten years; because of their beauty and simplicity they achieved a much wider use, beyond the church and into the concert hall.

The Missa brevis, KV 192 highlights Mozart’s ability to write music for the church that was not significantly different in style to the music of the court or the opera house. This mass is known as the ‘Little Credo Mass’ because of the repeated interjections of the short ‘Credo’ theme throughout – a five-note motif which Mozart many years later would use as the main theme of the last movement of his final symphony.

Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Performer: Susan Gritton, Frances Bourne, Sam Furness, George Humphreys, …
Conductor: Andrew Nethsingha
Orchestra/Ensemble: Cambridge St. John's College Choir, St John's Sinfonia

Reviews: There are many fine recordings of the Coronation Mass, but this new Chandos release stands out for a number of reasons: the inclusion of two of the Church sonatas which were written for the purpose of inclusion in the liturgy, the existence of both 16 and 24 bit lossless downloads, the provision of texts and translations, and the couplings which contribute to the generous playing time. That puts it ahead in terms of playing time of the Winchester/Christopher Hogwood version on Decca 4365852 which I recommended in the January 2010 Roundup and rivalled only by Peter Schreier’s excellent Philips coupling of the Requiem and Coronation Masses.

Schreier gives us two masterpieces in excellent performances, still sounding very well on CD – I can’t vouch for the download but the CD remains my version of choice for the Requiem in particular. If that’s the combination that you want, it’s unbeatable. The Decca recording is also strongly recommended, not least for the team of soloists, especially Emma Kirkby, and the Vesperæ de Confessore coupling is well worth having.

The new Chandos recording is, thus, up against strong competition. The couplings for the Coronation Mass include two short masterpieces, Ave verum corpus and Exsultate, jubilate, but the Missa brevis is a run of the mill example of the short settings that Mozart had to compose for Archbishop Colloredo, who liked to get off hunting after Mass. It is, as Jeremy Summerly’s Chandos notes state, remarkably tight, but I can’t summon much enthusiasm for it.

Susan Gritton is in competition with Emma Kirkby in the Coronation Mass and Exsultate. Heard one straight after the other in the latter work, I have to award the palm to Ms Kirkby and the unassailable beauty of her tone. (With Westminster Cathedral Choir, the Academy of Ancient Music and Christopher Hogwood, Decca Oiseau Lyre 4118332. Also on Eloquence CD 4767460. Be aware, however, that the playing times of the two Kirkby/Hogwood recordings are very short: that including Exsultate runs to just over 47 minutes. Put that Decca recording out of mind and the new Chandos ranks very high.

If I seem to have been praising the new recording with faint damns, let me end by extolling its virtues – it’s only by comparison with Kirkby and Hogwood, both of whom stand almost infallible in my esteem in anything that they touch, that I failed to make this my Download of the Month. It has a great deal going for it – fine solo singing, a choral contribution from a choir to challenge the best that Oxford and Cambridge have to offer, with a director who has improved even on his predecessor, a fine period-instrument accompaniment, excellent recording in a variety of formats – I listened to the 16/44.1 version – and a first-class booklet and this should be a best-seller.

I even award some points in favour of the new recording – the beautiful Agnus Dei, so reminiscent of the Countess’s aria Voi che sapete in Figaro, sounds less drawn out than by Hogwood, though they take almost exactly the same time on paper; the tempo transition at around 4 minutes is more naturally handled, and the Gritton sings Agnus in the Italian manner, where Kirkby employs the hard g of her classical Latin training – yes, I was taught to pronounce it that way, too, and they probably used the Germanic hard g in Austria in Mozart’s time, but I persist in disliking it.