Mozart - Great Mass in C minor / Augér, von Stade, Lopardo, Hauptmann, Bernstein

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential recording
Leonard Bernstein's performance of this Mass is the finest available. Proof comes from a very unexpected source. A major French classical music magazine conducted a blind listening test of every available performance of this Mass--and this recording was the unanimous choice of the jury. No one was more surprised than they were, but one minute of this blazing performance confirms that they were right. A superb disc. --David Hurwitz

Tracks:

Ave verum corpus KV 618
Exsultate, jubilate KV 165 (158a)
Great Mass In C Minor KV 427: Kyrie (Andante moderato)
Great Mass In C Minor KV 427: Gloria - Gloria in excelsis Deo (Allegro vivace)
Great Mass In C Minor KV 427: Gloria - Laudamus te (Allegro aperto)
Great Mass In C Minor KV 427: Gloria - Gratias agimus tibi (Adagio)
Great Mass In C Minor KV 427: Gloria - Domine Deus (Allegro moderato)
Great Mass In C Minor KV 427: Gloria - Qui tollis peccata mundi (Largo)
Great Mass In C Minor KV 427: Gloria - Quoniam to solus Sanctus (Allegro)
Great Mass In C Minor KV 427: Gloria - Jesu Christe (Adagio)
Great Mass In C Minor KV 427: Gloria - Cum Sancto Spiritu
Great Mass In C Minor KV 427: Credo - Credo in unum Deum (Allegro maestoso)
Great Mass In C Minor KV 427: Credo - Et incarnatus est (Andante)
Great Mass In C Minor KV 427: Sanctus - Hosanna in excelsis (Largo - Allegro comodo)
Great Mass In C Minor KV 427: Benedictus (Allegro comodo)

Amazon.com essential recording

Leonard Bernstein's performance of this Mass is the finest available. Proof comes from a very unexpected source. A major French classical music magazine conducted a blind listening test of every available performance of this Mass--and this recording was the unanimous choice of the jury. No one was more surprised than they were, but one minute of this blazing performance confirms that they were right. A superb disc. --David Hurwitz

Customer Reviews:

Superb.......2007-06-14

I have heard few other renditions of Mozart's "Great Mass," but there's no reason to after having heard Bernstein's. You may feel some premonitions buying a Bernstein product as many other reviewers on this page have--but throw them out! This recording is absolutely supreme.

Late Bernstein--broad, intense, and moving.......2006-09-26

I can't add much to Mr. Grabowski's praise for this CD. I join Mozart in being no grat lover of church music, but Bernstein's intense, fervent approach is deeply satisfying. He's bucking historical trends, of course, by being so openly devout in an era when period-style readings tend to be drained of reverence. But this reading isn't loggy, and I'd wager it will stand up for a long time. In the fillwer of Exsultate Jubilate, Auger is technically splendid, ad if she shows a bit of effort in the coloratura, it adds to the emotion. The best thing is Bernstein's conducting--it's the best I've ever heard, though again quite traditional. In all, an overlooked gem in LB's vast catalog.

No one is more surprised than me..........2006-09-23

Lenny would not have been my first choice for these works. Before hearing this CD, Ferenc Fricsay (also on DG) was my favorite for the C minor mass. And it's still a highly-recommended recording, but if I had to play the old "desert island" game, I'd opt for this performance above all others, for reasons that are more spiritual than technical. Yes, the choir does get away from Lenny a little bit at times (though I think a reviewer below me made far too much of this--live performances don't have that pin-point accuracy of a studio, and this is a live performance), but for fervor, devotion, intensity, this is a burning C minor mass. It's interesting that I was just rereading Hildesheimer the other day and he points out that we cannot tell of Mozart's own devotion in his sacred works--he assumes the persona of the devoted for the task at hand, but the music reveals nothing of the man behind them. Well, maybe so, but this recording definitely reveals the man behind the baton. Was it because, just one year before his own death, Lenny sensed that time was short? He certainly attacked certain works in his last years with a spirituality bordering on Furtwanglerian. Sometimes it didn't work (eg, his Tchaikovsky Pathetique on DG), and sometimes it did. Here, like furtwangler often did, he uses dynamics in some abrupt and shocking ways that, as with Furtwangler, may not be strickly kosher. I don't care. They work.

Here Bernstein summons forth all his energy--and judging by how he looked in late interviews, he did not have that much of it by then, though you'd hardly know it here--to give a grand summation of the work. It's the sort of large-scale epic reading it hadn't yet received on disc. Arleen Auger, surely with Bernstein's help, finds more emotion and shape in her Kyrie solo than anyone I've ever heard. Some have found the pace here heavy or ponderous but I find it intense. Same with the Sanctus movement--this is a decidedly earthbound Sanctus, but it works for me. Listen to Auger in the Laudamus...heavenly, at least to these ears. The interplay between Auger and von Stade in the Domine Deus is delicious. And in the Gratias agimus tibi, the very heavens seem to open. --Listen to the ending. If that doesn't make your hair stand up, you must be bald!

On the other two works--the Exsultate Jubilate and the Ave verum corpus--Bernstein takes fewer chances. The performances still shimmer, but these are more mainstream interpretations. Auger does well on both, though even she can't hide how tough the Exsultate must be to navigate. The program here is very fulfilling. These pieces, though not put together on one CD often, work well. There's something very satisfying about starting with the Ave verum and ending with the great mass.

The whole occasion has the spark and spontaneity of a live performance, and I'm glad DG captured Bernstein live so many times in his last years--I generally find these recordings more satisfying than many of his early Sony studio NYPO discs. Again, every hair may not be in place, but this disc has a convicting missing from many other recordings.

One utterly trivial but interesting note: this is the only Bernstein CD or LP in my entire collection that does not have a picture of Lenny anywhere. Not on the cover, nor inside, nor on the back. Well, there's a white haired dot on the cover that *might* be him, but it's impossible to tell. At any rate, unusual for a man with such an ego, who always insisted on being featured prominently.

Bernstein's Final Go-Around With Mozart.......2006-07-05

Save for a number of scattered recordings over the decades (including an impressive take on the composer's Requiem), Leonard Bernstein wasn't necessarily known as a Mozart conductor, nor as a choral conductor; his pallet tended to include giants like Mahler and Copland, to name just two. But when he did venture into choral music, he did come off on the winning end of the ledger.

Such is the case with this recording he made for Deutsche Grammophon in April 1990 of three vocal/choral works by the great Wolfgang. The first is the much-beloved "Ave Verum Corpus" for organ, string orchestra, and chorus that Mozart wrote while basically on his death bed in December 1791. And although it is the work of a dying young man, it is also the work of a young man whose spirit would live on. Second is the motet "Exsultate Jubilate", a fairly early work of the composer for soprano soloist and small orchestra (ornamented with a harpsichord, indicitive of a holdover from the Baroque era). Arleen Auger is the soprano soloist here, and she is at her usual best.

Auger is then joined by mezzo Frederica von Stade, tenor Frank Lopardo, bass Cornelius Hauptmann, and organist Friedemann Winklhofer for Mozart's admittedly fragmentary but still impressive Great Mass in C Minor (believed to be his 17th and final setting of the Latin Mass). Scored for a fairly significant-sized orchestra, including three trombones, it is a work of immense power that takes a lot out of not only the vocal soloists, but also the orchestra, the chorus, and the conductor.

Fortunately, Bernstein, even here, just seven months before his own death, is up to the task, as are the forces of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (the same forces he had for his incredible '88 Mozart Requiem). Although he admittedly does go for a marathon pace in part of the Gloria section, for the most part Bernstein takes his time to bring out the power of this piece. The all-star vocal soloists are all at their professional best, and the recording (made live in the same cathedral as Bernstein's Mozart Requiem recording) is another first-rate one for the Deutsche Grammophon engineers.

An impressive recording for all concerned, and as one of Bernstein's valedictory recordings, this is an epic recording to be treasured by all.

Inspiring.......2006-02-26

This CD is everything I'd hoped it would be - Auger has the voice of an angel, the entire production is magnificent.

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