Philippe Herreweghe, Collegium Vocale, Ghent, Barbara Schlick - Johann Sebastian Bach: Mass in B minor (2009)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 482 Mb | Total time: 54:30+52:09 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Virgin Veritas | # 6 93197 2 | Recorded: 1988
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 482 Mb | Total time: 54:30+52:09 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Virgin Veritas | # 6 93197 2 | Recorded: 1988
Originally recorded in 1988, this was one of the recordings that made historical performance practice the mainstream when it came to Bach's major choral works. Every moment of the mass was thought through anew, every bit of conventional piety purged. Major B minor mass recordings in the following years have developed one aspect or another further than conductor Philippe Herreweghe does here; Masaaki Suzuki's Bach Collegium Japan chisels out the counterpoint in greater detail, and for grand reverential warmth there's always John Eliot Gardiner. But for a constant sense of wonder that makes even the larger harmonic structure of the mass seem surprising as it unfolds – for a real sense of a group responding not only to a conductor's control but to his artistic vision – this reading by Herreweghe and his Collegium Vocale Ghent remains unexcelled.