Search - Beethoven, Orgonasova, Larsson :: Missa Solemnis

Zinman leads, gung-ho, an orchestra, chorus & four soloists

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 08/30/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"As with the Zinman and Tonhalle traversal of the complete, newly edited Beethoven symphonies (also released on the Arte Nova imprint), this performance of the great Missa Solmenis commands our attention. Tempos in general, are faster than you may remember from other, big-band versions we have revered in the past. Several sections are Daringly Speedy, in fact, when you take into account that a large chorus and four soloists are being musically integrated with the Tonhalle. Everybody has something to say, it seems, under Zinman's vigorous leadership; although nobody gets the spotlight ... except perhaps Zinman as first among equals. Orchestral and vocal/choral textures tilt distinctly towards transparency, even when it seems that everyone is busy singing and playing. The rhythms are consistently sprung in a lively manner. A listener may be excused for thinking that Beethoven's sense of worship and awe is almost always a physically tangible sense of motion or movement, so often do these musicians make this Missa Solemnis dance right out, shaking with celebration. This is new-school Beethoven, aggressively influenced by the decades of scholarship and recreated performance practice we lump together under the banners of Early Music or Original Instruments. Rather than displace anybody else we have come to love in this work, Zinman and company bid to establish their own place on the shelf, right alongside whomever else we have already elected to sit there. Not a single, solitary, once-and-for-all performance of the Missa ... is this one, then. But, musically, a fine and committed update that will have you return and revisit all the transcendance you previously thought Beethoven had captured by the time he wrote it down. What did Schnabel say? This is better music than can ever be played. Tip to USA: get this recording from amazon.co.uk because it has no local distribution in the Americas."