Mozart Sampson

As the mysterious opening bars of the Kyrie gradually emerge into the light, we know that this recording of Mozart’s glorious Great Mass in C minor is a special one: the tempi perfect, the unfolding drama of the choral writing so carefully judged, and, above it all, the crystalline beauty of soloist Carolyn Sampson’s soprano, floating like a ministering angel. Masaaki Suzuki’s meticulous attention to detail, so rewarding in his remarkable Bach recordings, shines throughout this disc, the playing alert, the choir responsive, the soloists thrilling. And there is the bonus of an exhilarating Exsultate, Jubilate with Sampson on top form.

Conductor Daniel Reuss' splendid new recording of Handel's Solomon expands the extraordinarily broad range of music, including works by Bach, Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Ligeti, Stefan Wolpe, and the Bang on a Can composers, in which he has shown his mastery. His 2006 recording of Martin's Le vin herbé was one of the highlights of the year. Handel scored the oratorio for unusually large choral and orchestral forces, and the sound of this performance, with the RIAS-Kammerchor and Akademie für Alte Musik, Berlin, is warmly humanistic, beautifully paced, and tonally sumptuous, and is sung and played with stylistic assurance and lively dramatic passion.

The King’s Consort’s latest foray into the studio brings us a thrilling new recording of Michael Haydn’s Requiem, and reveals the little-known ‘St Ursula’ Mass to be a truly exceptional work. The Requiem was composed in response to tragedy, the death of Haydn’s patron—the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg—providing the official cloak for an outpouring of grief as much inspired by the death of the composer’s infant daughter. In itself the work is a memorable and confident example of the genre, but its deserved fame has been somewhat eclipsed by the many striking similarities between the Haydn and Mozart Requiems; when Wolfgang Amadeus composed what was to be his last—and most famous—work a full twenty years after Haydn’s memorial to the archbishop had been first performed, he doubtless intended it as the highest of praise to his friend that he borrowed melodies, rhythms, scoring, structure … Such points of musicological interest must no longer be allowed to obscure the worth of the Haydn’s original magnum opus.