• Two new recordings of Bach’s Mass in B minor (1749) remind us that performers cannot resist this pinnacle of the repertoire. Among historically informed accounts, Philippe Herreweghe has recorded it three times, John Eliot Gardiner twice, 30 years apart. Now here’s another by the Bach veteran William Christie and his predominantly French group Les Arts Florissants (Harmonia Mundi), recorded live in Paris’s Philharmonie.
At first the approach seems almost too light-toned and ethereal, but soon the intimacy of these modest forces – a chorus of fewer than two dozen, with an orchestra of around the same size – takes an ineluctable grip. Textures are clear, tempi brisk – the Sanctus positively skips. Well-matched soloists – Katherine Watson, Tim Mead, Reinoud Van Mechelen and André Morsch – are alert and secure. The shift from the sobriety of the Confiteor to the explosive Et exspecto resurrectionem is as good as you’ll find, the concluding Dona nobis pacem radiant but resolute.
In contrast, the larger choir of Trinity College Cambridge has recorded the work in its college chapel, directed by Stephen Layton with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Hyperion). All the soloists are admirable: two ex-Trinity choristers, Katherine Watson (an overlap with the Christie recording) and Gwilym Bowen, together with Neal Davies and Iestyn Davies, whose pure-toned, affecting Agnus Dei is alone worth the price of the disc.
Both albums provide authoritative booklet essays and texts. I was glad to find William Christie’s enlightening note on how he has approached the performance (mainly from the keyboard, concentrating on it as chamber music). Either recording is excellent, but I need both: youth and wisdom pay off equally in this work.
• The Russian Orthodox church, which celebrates Easter next week, has inspired much music from, among others, Rimsky-Korsakov and Rachmaninov. From the World Service archives, try How to Listen to Russian Orthodox Easter Music. Follow it with Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil from last year’s Proms, on iPlayer for another week, superbly sung by the Latvian Radio Choir directed by Sigvards Kļava.
