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Concerto Copenhagen, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Soloists - Johann Sebastian Bach: Mass in B minor (2015) 2 CDs [Re-Up]

Posted By: Designol
Concerto Copenhagen, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Soloists - Johann Sebastian Bach: Mass in B minor (2015) 2 CDs [Re-Up]

Johann Sebastian Bach - Mass in B minor (2015) 2 CDs
Maria Keohane, Joanne Lunn, Alex Potter, Jan Kobow, Peter Harvey
Concerto Copenhagen, conducted by Lars Ulrik Mortensen

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 490 Mb | Scans ~ 80 Mb | Time: 01:43:32
Genre: Classical | Label: CPO | # cpo 777 851-2

The sound world of Bach’s last great Mass has changed radically in recent decades; one-to-a-part performance practice is, as conductor Lars Ulrik Mortensen puts it, “changing our entire notion of Bach’s acoustic universe”. This bold claim is amply proven in an account of dazzling transparency, dance-like rhythms and utter clarity. Sometimes the balance seems not quite right, for example when organ continuo dominates, but some superb ensemble numbers pit voices against virtuosic instruments so each seems to outdo the other in joyous exuberance. The five soloists complement each other well, and the addition of just five extra singers is all that is needed to explode Bach’s universal vision into life.

Review by Nicholas Kenyon, The Guardian

The way in which the first chord in the opening Kyrie is placed tells you that this is a performance where each contributor, whether singer or player, listens before they plunge in, breathes as one (even the strings) and so questions of balance and articulation have been sorted almost by osmosis as it were. This is not to decry the hard work that must have gone into this performance, but it reveals the underlying quality of the string playing, where the players achieve an unusual degree of clarity. No-one who has heard this group’s recordings of the Bach violin concertos will be surprised at this: they play with 4.4.2.2.1. The numbers are, I think, reduced in the Laudamus te as well as in the Credo. Every player as well as singer is (very properly) listed, and although there are no details of pitch and temperament given, nor of the actual instruments used, we get a fair idea of who is playing what, if not always when.

The balance and cohesion of the choral sound is equally impressive: the five concertinists are matched by a similar group of five ripienists, and care is taken in the darker four part concerted numbers to silence the upper sopranos. A careful scheme of where the vocal lines are doubled has been worked out, and is especially effective (and complex!) in the opening of the Gloria, the Cum sancto spiritu and the Sanctus, while the divisions in the opening Kyrie, between the Credo and the Patrem omnipotentem, the Confiteor and Et expecto are much as you might imagine. They are sometimes hard to spot because, as you would expect from performers of this quality, the vocal sounds are as well matched as the strings. This is rare achievement, as so many singers get used to singing ‘solo’, even when singing as part of an ensemble. What this means is that the full vocal group has a more solid and sustained sound, while only being marginally ‘louder’ in the traditional understanding of dynamics, like the difference between an Oberwerk and a Hauptwerk in a classical German organ. These ‘terraced’ dynamics balance the instrumental scoring for the most part, and the ten singers allow a OVPP Hosanna, which captures the antiphonal feel, if not an entirely doubled Sanctus, where a couple more altos would have completed the scheme. If you can manage a third oboe just for this one movement, why not have a couple more altos?

This all makes for a really good performance. Tempi feel unforced, and Mortensen is not trying to prove anything by introducing extreme dynamics or idiosyncratic phrasing. It all sounds natural, and very poised, even when really fast.

It is important to have two such well-matched sopranos in the Christe: they are distinct vocally, but beautifully balanced and equally assured in how they shape their phrases, and how get the word ‘Christe’ to hang in the air rather than being squeezed over the bar-lines. Joanne Lunn is an acknowledged star in this kind of singing, but the Swedish soprano, Maria Keohane, sings freshly and brightly and is clearly vocally extremely able; she seems to have sung an enormous variety of operatic roles as well as being perfectly at home in this style and repertoire, including having recorded BWV 51 with Mortensen and the EUBO. She has worked a good deal with Philippe Pierlot and Ricercar. All in all, I’ve never heard such a good performance of the Christe.

Joanne Lunn’s Laudamus te is equally beautifully poised, and I suspect that single strings are being used here to give those accompanimental figures that degree of rhythmic flexibility to partner the voice exactly. The soprano/tenor duet Domine Deus has fine flute playing with the semiquavers paired inégales but not over-Lombardised, as in the 1735 version, and the transition to the clear and lucid Qui tollis with single voices is managed beautifully. Alex Potter balances his artistry with the d’amore in Qui sedes – listen to how he shapes his phrases in bars 26 to 29 especially, and it is rare for the same bass singer to sound as convincing singing low in the thickly scored Quoniam as in the lyrical Et in Spiritum sanctum as Peter Harvey does. But it is not just in their more obviously solo passages that the quality of these singers’ phrasing and musicianship shines out. Listen to the way they tackle the Cum sancto spiritu fugue: not a detail is lost, their breathing shapes the lines and the players follow them, yet nowhere does the impetus slacken.

The same qualities are apparent in the Credo – spun between the five singers and the two – I think – single violins over the bass (but do I detect the 16’ before the Patrem?) and its junction with the full band and ripienists in the Patrem omnipotentem. Mortensen’s attention to vocal scoring brings out the chiastic structure of the Symbolum perfectly, and the slackening of the tempo at the end of the Confiteor before launching into the Et expecto seems near perfect.

There are numerous other recordings of the B minor – why don’t we call it the great Mass in D? – available, so why might you choose this one?

First, because although I have long favoured Andrew Parrott’s pioneering OVPP recording of 1985 for the absolute clarity of its voice parts, this is even better – especially in the playing. As well as the superb strings, the quality of the wind playing and Bob Farley’s trumpeting is matched nowhere. And while there are some things I find captivating about Collegium Vocale 1704 with Vaclav Luks (reviewed in EMR December 2013) – the swing of the Sanctus in particular – Luks hasn’t got the vocal scoring as well thought out as Mortensen, nor are his enthusiastic players quite so polished.

Second, while you may instinctively prefer the ‘big choir’ sound of Gardener’s recent Monteverdi Choir version (EMR November 2015) or Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan, this performance is hard to beat for clarity, coherence and equal musicianship from every participant, and while the feeble packaging and pretty thin liner notes do not add to what we already know about the history and recension of the B minor text, they do hint at the underlying decisions that make this such a winning performance.

A further comment: with many performances of these frequently recorded works available, I would find it helpful to have a link to a website where some of these issues in performance practice can be discussed, and the director can lay out his critical decisions with more space to give us the details of his scoring, the temperament at which they are performing, the makers of the instruments used, and especially the details of the organ. This might not be what most of the punters need, but in the same way as John Butt is able to fill out a performance (like that of the Dunedin’s Johannespassion or their recent Magnificat) with supplementary material, I would find this degree of detail useful when there are so many unresolved issues and the autograph score is the subject of much critical appraisal, as Uwe Wolf’s introduction to the revised NBA (2010) reminds us.

But hear this splendid performance as soon as you can, and keep it on the top of the pile.

Review by David Stancliffe, EarlyMusicReview.com


Concerto Copenhagen, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Soloists - Johann Sebastian Bach: Mass in B minor (2015) 2 CDs [Re-Up]



Concerto Copenhagen, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Soloists - Johann Sebastian Bach: Mass in B minor (2015) 2 CDs [Re-Up]




Soprano 1 Concertino: Maria Keohane
Soprano 2 Concertino: Joanne Lunn
Alto Concertino: Alex Potter
Tenor Concertino: Jan Kobow
Basso Concertino: Peter Harvey
Soprano 1 Ripieno: Else Torp
Soprano 2 Ripieno: Hanna Kappelin
Alto Ripieno: Valdemar Villadsen
Tenor Ripieno: Christopher Watson
Basso Ripieno: Jakob Bloch Jespersen

Concerto Copenhagen
Lars Ulrik Mortensen

Tracklist:

CD1:

01. I. Missa - Kyrie eleison (09:01)
02. I. Missa - Christe eleison (04:46)
03. I. Missa - Kyrie eleison II (03:35)
04. I. Missa - Gloria in excelsis Deo (01:42)
05. I. Missa - Et in terra pax (04:13)
06. I. Missa - Laudamus te (04:13)
07. I. Missa - Gratias agimus tibi (02:59)
08. I. Missa - Domine Deus (05:05)
09. I. Missa - Qui tollis (02:35)
10. I. Missa - Qui sedes (04:16)
11. I. Missa - Quoniam tu solus Sanctus (04:32)
12. I. Missa - Cum Sancto Spiritu (03:48)

CD2:

01. II. Symbolum Nicenum - Credo in unum Deum (01:49)
02. II. Symbolum Nicenum - Patrem omnipotentem (01:56)
03. II. Symbolum Nicenum - Et in unum Dominum (04:18)
04. II. Symbolum Nicenum - Et incarnatus est (02:42)
05. II. Symbolum Nicenum - Crucifixus (03:00)
06. II. Symbolum Nicenum - Et resurrexit (03:41)
07. II. Symbolum Nicenum - Et in Spiritum Sanctum (05:29)
08. II. Symbolum Nicenum - Confiteor (03:56)
09. II. Symbolum Nicenum - Et expecto (02:10)
10. III. Sanctus - Sanctus (04:59)
11. IV. Osana in excelsis (02:43)
12. IV. Benedictus (04:13)
13. IV. Osanna in excelsis (02:42)
14. IV. Agnus Dei (05:33)
15. IV. Dona nobis pacem (03:24)


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EAC extraction logfile from 25. July 2016, 20:55

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foobar2000 1.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2016-08-02 17:04:26

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DR Peak RMS Duration Track
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DR13 -3.00 dB -21.33 dB 4:47 02-I. Missa - Christe eleison
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DR10 -0.66 dB -14.29 dB 2:59 07-I. Missa - Gratias agimus tibi
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DR12 -5.25 dB -20.28 dB 2:35 09-I. Missa - Qui tollis
DR15 -0.95 dB -21.72 dB 4:16 10-I. Missa - Qui sedes
DR16 -1.94 dB -21.72 dB 4:32 11-I. Missa - Quoniam tu solus Sanctus
DR11 -0.62 dB -15.83 dB 3:48 12-I. Missa - Cum Sancto Spiritu
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Official DR value: DR13

Samplerate: 44100 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 16
Bitrate: 668 kbps
Codec: FLAC
================================================================================


Exact Audio Copy V1.1 from 23. June 2015

EAC extraction logfile from 25. July 2016, 21:26

Concerto Copenhagen, Lars Ulrik Mortensen / Bach - Mass in B minor - CD2

Used drive : HL-DT-STDVDRAM GU70N Adapter: 1 ID: 0

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 48
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 128 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -V -8 -T "Date=%year%" -T "Genre=%genre%" %source%


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Peak level 92.7 %
Extraction speed 5.1 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC A909D1F5
Copy CRC A909D1F5
Copy OK

No errors occurred


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foobar2000 1.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2016-08-02 17:04:46

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Analyzed: Concerto Copenhagen, Lars Ulrik Mortensen / Bach - Mass in B minor - CD2
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DR Peak RMS Duration Track
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
DR12 -0.82 dB -17.53 dB 1:50 01-II. Symbolum Nicenum - Credo in unum Deum
DR12 -0.66 dB -15.74 dB 1:57 02-II. Symbolum Nicenum - Patrem omnipotentem
DR14 -0.79 dB -19.98 dB 4:18 03-II. Symbolum Nicenum - Et in unum Dominum
DR12 -1.18 dB -21.48 dB 2:43 04-II. Symbolum Nicenum - Et incarnatus est
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DR13 -0.67 dB -17.99 dB 3:41 06-II. Symbolum Nicenum - Et resurrexit
DR13 -7.35 dB -23.72 dB 5:30 07-II. Symbolum Nicenum - Et in Spiritum Sanctum
DR13 -3.09 dB -20.27 dB 3:56 08-II. Symbolum Nicenum - Confiteor
DR11 -0.65 dB -15.15 dB 2:11 09-II. Symbolum Nicenum - Et expecto
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Concerto Copenhagen, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Soloists - Johann Sebastian Bach: Mass in B minor (2015) 2 CDs [Re-Up]

All thanks to original releaser

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