Beethoven composed
his monumental Missa Solemnis to
mark the occasion of his supporter and
patron the Archduke Rudolph’s installation
as the Archbishop of Olmuet in 1819.
Beethoven missed the date of the Archbishop’s
enthronement by three years and works
by Haydn and Hummel were used instead.
It was not until 1824 that the Archbishop
received the work.
Beethoven had laboured
hard over his Herculean task, agonising
over the work and subjecting the five
movement score to much revision. Tellingly
he wrote on the manuscript score the
inscription, "from the heart, may
it go to the heart." The Missa
Solemnis is acknowledged by many
as one of the greatest masterpieces
in all music and Beethoven was reported
to have considered his Missa Solemnis
as the crown of his artistic achievements.
Not surprisingly, he uses a sacred text
for the Missa Solemnis but despite
this the score is dramatic rather than
religious, overflowing with passion
and strength with a real sense of defiant
pride.
At one time I would
not have looked twice at this CD in
a record shop or in a list of new releases.
What could a hardly-known orchestra
from Nashville in the deep-south of
America know about performing one of
Beethoven’s greatest and most demanding
works? I used to have this Romantic
ideal that only the Austrian and German
orchestras could play Mahler, Haydn,
Beethoven and Mozart; only the Russians
could play Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich
and only an English orchestra could
perform Elgar and Vaughan Williams.
I now know that holding onto these blinkered
principles only serves to deprive the
listener of many superbly performed
works. Although an orchestra may have
a tradition of playing a home composer’s
music it certainly doesn’t have the
monopoly on delivering wonderful interpretations.
Recent examples of marvellous performances
that I have heard on disc include Rimsky-Korsakov
from Malaysia, Bernstein from New Zealand,
J.S. Bach from Japan and Shostakovich
from Italy and Australia.
On this Naxos release,
the performance from the Nashville Symphony
Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Kenneth
Schermerhorn is electrifying with a
magnificent blend of white-hot intensity
combined with a genuine serenity so
rarely achieved in the recording studio.
I found the incandescent choral singing
to be superb with an abundance of dramatic
flair which drew me from one section
of the score to the next.
The singing and orchestral
playing particularly in the Et resurrexit
teria die section of the Credo
(track 7) is as fine as I have ever
heard in choral performance. Warm and
characterful singing from the soloists
in the Sanctus (tracks 8 and
9) which is a joy to behold with a real
sense of genuine engagement in this
wonderful music. The final part of the
Agnus Dei, which is the
conclusion to the whole work (tracks
10 and 11), has few parallels in sacred
music and ends in an atmosphere of spiritual
serenity and a triumph for Maestro Schermerhorn
and his performers.
Beethoven’s score makes
considerable demands on our four well-matched
soloists who undertake this considerable
challenge head-on, impressively delivering
expressive and refined singing. However
all the soloists have distinctive vibratos
which could present problems for some
listeners. The violin soloist in the
Benedictus (track 9) Mary Kathryn
van Osdale gives a fine if suitably
understated performance. She plays a
Stradivarius and has a lovely tone providing
a really appropriate ethereal background
to the solo voices.
On this showing, together
with his conducting on three recent
Naxos releases in their American Classics
Series, Kenneth Schermerhorn, the musical
director of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra,
must be one America’s best kept secrets;
a kind of American equivalent of David
Lloyd-Jones in the UK. Schermerhorn’s
direction has real presence and authority,
allowing the pace to flow freely and
displaying the necessary emotional intensity.
The sound quality is
among the best that I have heard from
Naxos. Crisp and clear and remarkably
well balanced too. Naxos have struck
gold with this release. A truly awe-inspiring
performance. Outstanding!
Michael Cookson
See
also review by Gwyn Parry Jones
Nashville Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Kenneth
Schermerhorn 