Messe en Si mineur

Description

This luminous Mass in B minor comes at just the right moment, as the abysses are closing in on us. Lars Ulrik Mortensen conducts it in calm tempos, making the polyphonies sing, still illuminated by the ten soloists with winged song, in gilded Latin; it is quite wonderful to bathe thus in so much serenity and simplicity. Those who want their Mass in B minor as an abstraction will be disappointed: the words of the liturgy are embodied, and the Symbolum Niceum takes on a certain strangeness in a Crucifixus between lamentation and stupefaction, but everywhere the light never yields, without however falling into the syndrome of the “pocket-sized performance.” We have known so many Mass in B minor recordings reduced to a skeleton or falling into austerity; that is never the case here, but simply a mobile mass, expressive without emphasis, often enthusiastic, a celebration that you could pair in your festivities with the Weihnachstoratorium: Christmas is approaching, and this year I would spend it with this music of hope offered to us by Lars Ulrik Mortensen, his singers and his Concerto Copenhagen (discophilia - Artalinna.com). (Jean-Charles Hoffelé) This disc gives us the opportunity to revisit our Bach, with pleasure and not without surprises or delights, through a masterpiece of inexhaustible resources to which one could apply what Claudel said of Bernanos: “that masterful command of events and figures... that special gift for masses in motion and indecipherable ensembles”: the Mass in B minor BWV 232, composed around 1749 by a composer in full command of his powers. The musical material is certainly heterogeneous, but the work is so dense in content that its interpretation is in any case delicate. Each new version must pass through this ontological prerequisite: is it historically informed? Does it contain the legacy of Klemperer or that of Harnoncourt? Does it belong to the modern current (Herreweghe, Susuki, Rademann)? Is it a scrupulous, meticulous, or radically committed vision? Mind or heart? Heaven or earth? Does it ultimately reconcile opposites? With Concerto Copenhagen and its conductor Lars Ulrik Mortensen, we are rather dealing with a chamber version, in Rifkin’s one-per-part perspective. No choir, but a brisk direction, attentive to moving forward. In the literal sense, and that is already substantial, one is content with a tiny, well-drilled, vigorous, persuasive orchestra and wonderful soloists (shared between ripieno and concertino), confronted year in, year out with their part and who more than adequately make up for the absent choral forces. The overall balance between voice and instrumental ensemble being ideal, the Mass vibrates with a light as intense as it is clear-sighted. A successful abitur, with one hand tied behind its back. (Jérôme Angouillant)