Franz Xaver RICHTER (1709 - 1789)
Messa Pastorale [32:45]
Symphony in D [11:04]
Magnificat [13:20]
Marzena Lubaszka (soprano), Piotr Lykowski (alto), Maciej Gocman (tenor),
Bogdan Makal (bass)
Wroclaw Philharmonic Choir, Wroclaw Baroque Orchestra/Andrzej Kosendiak
rec. 18-20 May 2008, Église Sainte-Marie, Mittlach, France. DDD
Notes in English, French and German. Texts in Latin.
CYPRES CYP1659 [57:11]
When, in 1769, the sixty year old Franz Xaver Richter was appointed Kapellmeister
of the cathedral in Strasbourg, he brought with him a wealth of experience
and a considerable reputation. Born in Moravia, Richter was a student at the
Jesuit seminary at Ungarisch Hradisch, before spending some years in Vienna
- and making at least a brief trip to Italy. By 1736 he was working as a bass
in the Stuttgart Hofkapelle and by the following year he was in Ettal as director
of music at the Benedictine Ritterakademie. 1740 saw his appointment as vice-Kapellmeister
(and later Kapellmeister) to Prince-Abbot Anselm von Reichlin-Meldegg in Kempten.
In 1746 he moved to Mannheim, in the service of the Elector Palatine Carl
Theodor. Continuing to work as a singer - and perhaps as a violinist too -
Richter the composer made a major contribution to the evolution of the Mannheim
school which so impressed and influenced Mozart. During the 1750s he travelled
in the Low Countries, France and England. In the 1760s he wrote his treatise
Harmonische Belehrungen. During his Mannheim years, Richter was best known
as a composer of string quartets. Though he had already written some church
music, it was the move to Strasbourg that prompted his full emergence as a
composer of sacred music.
Though he may have been sixty when he took up his post in Strasbourg, Richter
was evidently not weary or short of energy. In the next twenty years he wrote
some forty settings of the mass (in 1788 Mozart praised one of them as “charmingly
written”), along with many motets, psalms, a Requiem, a Te Deum and a Tenebrae
cycle previously recorded on Cypres (CYP1624). Much of it has a grandeur befitting
the magnificence of the Cathedral, one of the masterpieces of high gothic.
In his youth Richter made some arrangements from sacred works by Caldara -
whom Richter might well have met during his time in Vienna - and there is
something of that influence discernable in these late sacred works, along
with obvious affinities with Haydn.
The Messa Pastorale was written around 1680. It employs some pretty large
forces and the trumpets and percussion are not stinted – it must have sounded
splendid in the large spaces of the Cathedral; a bit more of a sense of space
wouldn’t have gone amiss in the present recording. The Kyrie has the air of
a dignified proclamation, a summoning of the faithful as much as an act of
prayer, though the fugal conclusion has a striking lightness, while the Gloria
is characterised by a kind of solemn radiance. It is lit up by some fine orchestral
writing, not least in the ‘Domine Deus’, where bass Bogdan Makal impresses.
Some of the loveliest passages come in the Credo – in which ‘public’ statements
at the beginning and end, for full choir and orchestra, of the initial ‘Credo
in unum Deum’ and the closing ‘Et resurrexit’ and ‘Et vitam venturi’ frame
two more intimate meditations on the ‘Et incarnates est’ and the ‘Crucifixus’.
In these two central sections of the Credo Richter invites from his hearers
an empathetically imaginative sympathy with both the birth and the death of
Christ, skilfully deploying flutes (to evoke a Nativity scene) and the quasi-angelic
high voices. The latter are very well sung by Marzena Lubaszka and Piotr Lykowski.
In the Sanctus a melodic and expressive setting of the ‘Benedictus qui venit
in nomine Domini’ is gracefully performed by tenor Maciej Gocman. The closing
‘Agnus Dei’ and ‘Dona nobis pacem’ are set with pleasing lightness and crispness,
qualities to which Andrzej Kosendiak and his forces respond admirably.
The Magnificat is also a work of Richter’s Strasbourg years, a work in which
he makes pleasingly varied use of his resources, from forceful tuttis for
choir and orchestra to some unaccompanied writing for the soprano, from a
section for the quartet of soloists to some prominent and very effective writing
for the horns. This is a fine piece, well worth getting to know, a piece which,
like the Messa Pastorale evidences all that Richter had learned and also makes
clear that his imagination had by no means ossified.
In between these two sacred works this disc places a Sinfonia written during
Richter’s years at Mannheim. As so often in Richter’s orchestral writing one
can hear anticipations of the fully-fledged classical manner. The three movements
(Allegro assai, Andantino arioso and Presto) are played idiomatically by the
Wroclaw Baroque Orchestra, from the assertive and opening, through the initially
halting tenderness and ensuing grace of the central movement to the assurance
and self-confidence of the final Presto.
Soloists, choir and orchestra all acquit themselves with real credit. They,
under the direction of Andrzej Kosendiak, have given us a fine first recording
of a Christmas Mass that well deserves to be heard, to be brought to life
rather than merely preserved in the Archbishop’s Library in Strasbourg.
Glyn Pursglove
A valuable insight into Richter’s interesting late work as a composer of sacred music.
see also review by Johan van Veen