Joshua Rifkin

Johann Sebastian Bach - Mass in B Minor (Breitkopf & Härtel Edition)
Dunedin Consort & Players / John Butt
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz: 1,87 GB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Linn Records # CKD 254 | Country/Year: UK 2006
Genre: Classical, Sacred | Style: Baroque, Vocal | Source: Linn

"…Many excellent recordings of this monumental work cater for different tastes and priorities. Some have more consistent line-ups of soloists, equally impressive choirs (of varying sizes) and comparably strong artistic direction. Although an excellent one voice-per-part version is nothing new, Butt's insightful direction and scholarship, integrated with the Dunedin's extremely accomplished instrumental playing and consort singing, amount to an enthralling and revelatory collective interpretation of the Mass in B minor - perhaps the most probing since Andrew Parrott's explosive 1985 version" ~Grammophone

…Bach's Mass in B Minor is undoubtedly his most spectacular choral work and the Dunedin Consort's soloist-led performance enables a level of clarity and expression that is not traditionally a feature of modern choral performance…

The ensemble is nigh perfect… the freshness with which they sing radiates joy throughout the entire score.

Classic FM Magazine

The Dunedin Consort's exemplary singers produce virtuoso choruses that are theatrically charged, splendidly poised and exquisitely blended.

Gramophone

Dionysos Now! continues their journey to immortalize the unexplored works of polyphonic master Adriaen Willaert. The third album in the series will be released on vinyl in September. The new album revolves around the Missa sine nomine. It is assumed that the work was composed between 1522 and 1527, at a time when Willaert was a member of the music chapel of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este in Ferrara, Italy. This rediscovered untitled Mass, which the ensemble have now sung as a world premiere, can therefore rightly bear the name Missa Ippolito.

In 1979 it was inconceivable; even in 1989 it seemed radical if not ridiculous. By 1999, however, performing Bach's choral music with one singer and player per part had started to catch on. Around 1982 Joshua Rifkin first argued that Bach composed most of his sacred music for an ensemble of soloists; when Rifkin recorded the Mass in B Minor that way, he had few defenders and many outraged detractors. Gradually other Baroque specialists such as Andrew Parrott and Jeffrey Thomas tried this approach; now the (augmented) Purcell Quartet presents Bach's four brief "Lutheran" Masses with top-notch soloists–Volume 1 is not only a sterling example of one-on-a-part Bach, it's an outstanding performance, period… –Matthew Westphal