Exploring Bach's B Minor Mass

From 1957-1973 Werner recorded 55 of Bach's church cantatas as well as the St. John and St. Matthew Passions, the Christmas, Easter and Ascension Oratorios, the B minor Mass and the motets. MusicWeb stated, 'Werner's pacing of the (St. Matthew Passion) and his vision of it is compelling. The drama moves inexorably forward and the entire story is most movingly related.'

This recording, made in 1969, presents Ricther's chorus of 80 and orchestra using modern instruments, considered truer to Bach's spirit at this time than the large-orchestra oratorio style It is great to see a large chorus of everyday citizen singing Bach with such fervor. Filmed in the lovely baroque-style Klosterkirche in Diessen, about 25 miles southwest of Munich, this is a wonderful representation of Richter and Bach.

The Dunedin Consort’s recording of Bach’s Mass in B Minor revisits the spectacular individual virtuosity that made the Messiah recording so successful. This is the premiere recording of the work in the new Breitkopf edition, edited by Joshua Rifkin, a leading thinker in authentic period performance, who fully endorses John Butt’s interpretation. Bach’s Mass capitalizes on the very essence of the group’s skills: skilled virtuosic choral performance coupled with outstanding, characterful solo singing.

One of the supreme monuments of western sacred music, the Mass in B minor has been constantly reexamined by successive generations of performers. The questions it raises for musicologists and conductors are many and varied; each of them strives to give his or her own reading with the necessary humility. It was in this frame of mind that William Christie tackled the work in the course of a memorable tour in 2016.

In 1962, Walter Legge invited Klemperer to make a recording of Bach's Mass in B minor for EMI. Although the Mass was a work that Klemperer was strongly drawn to, he nonetheless declined the offer. He was reluctant to conduct the work using the vast forces that were typically employed for performances as he believed it should be performed with numbers similar to those that Bach would have envisaged. Several years later he proposed a recording of the piece using "authentic" forces of a choir of 48 and under 50 instrumentalists - hence this recording.