An evocative twilit photograph of the Dresden Frauenkirche adorns the
cover of this CD. The church was built in the seventeenth century but not
much was left standing after the aerial bombardment of the city in 1945. The
ruins remained as a kind of war memorial for some forty-five years, before
the decision was taken to reconstruct. Astonishingly, individual stones from
the ruins had been measured and catalogued, and these were used, as far as
possible, in the reconstruction of the edifice.
As well as church services, the Frauenkirche now serves as an important
cultural, and in particular, musical centre. Matthias Grünert is the
church’s formidable organist and choirmaster, and this disc also showcases
his work as a composer. The programme opens with two of his short,
a
cappella choral works.
Agnus Dei is tonal and sung in German.
It is extremely attractive and would be a worthy addition to any competent
church choir’s repertoire. The setting of
The Lord’s Prayer, sung
in Latin, is more ambitious. Rather daringly it treats the prayer as a
drama, so there is a fair amount of contrast within the work’s six-minute
duration. The musical language is again tonal, but more wide-ranging than in
the shorter work, and divisions within the choir make it a more challenging
prospect for the performers. On the strength of these two pieces, each as
convincing in its own way as the other, Matthias Grünert is a real
composer.
Percy Eastman Fletcher, born in Derby, was a composer of light music and
music for the theatre who also produced a number of organ works as well as
sacred choral pieces
(see
Philip
Scowcroft’s MusicWeb International article). Grünert plays three of his
organ works here.
Festival Offertorium is breezy and lively: its
title suits it well. An impressive peroration uses its themes in longer note
values, a good idea but maybe a little contrived.
Fountain Reverie
is a pictorial piece that allows the composer a greater range of texture and
melodic and harmonic freedom, and the player a greater range of colour. Like
all three pieces, it is resolutely tonal. The most interesting of the three,
in my view, is the
Festival Toccata. Indeed, if the organist struck
up with this at the end of the service I’d be tempted to stay in my seat and
listen. Form seems not to have been Fletcher’s strong point – endings
neither – and there are a few fairly predictable progressions in there too.
Even so, in this piece, at least, a real musical mind seems to be at work, a
reflection I find myself making for the second time in this review. I’m glad
to have made the acquaintance of these works; though not a great follower of
organ music, I’ll certainly be wanting to return to them in the future.
Matthias Grünert plays all three pieces with exceptional skill, his nimble
fingers particularly impressive in the second and third pieces. The composer
is responsible for the clear textures, but Grünert’s registration choices
certainly help. The recording is superbly immediate whilst at the same time
giving a lovely feel of the building.
Frank Martin composed most of his a cappella
Mass for Double
Choir in 1922, adding the Agnus Dei some four years later. Seeing the
work as something between God and himself, he decided to withhold it; its
first performance took place only in 1963. It is an early piece, in
relatively traditional language but is no pushover for the choir. I’ll plant
my feet firmly on the ground and declare that it is one of the supreme
masterpieces of the choral repertoire. The Chamber Choir of the Dresden
Frauenkirche numbers about thirty-five singers. They perform the Martin, as
they also do their conductor’s two pieces, with exquisite purity and beauty
of tone, splendid blend, unanimity of attack and impeccable tuning. Whether
you will respond favourably to this performance will depend on how you feel
about the conductor’s view of the work. Tempo indications are marked in
French throughout the score, except in the Agnus Dei, where the composer
reverts to Italian. There is not a single metronome mark, so the conductor
relies on intuition to decide exactly what the composer wanted; for example,
when he wrote, at the beginning of the Gloria, “calme, sans trainer” (“calm,
without dragging”). The opening phrase of the Gloria in this performance
certainly does not drag, but it is urgent rather than calm. In the sublime
Credo, Et resurrexit is very fast indeed – admittedly marked “vite” (“fast”
or “quick”) – whereas the following Et in spiritum sanctum, marked “modéré
et souple”, is very slow indeed, taking away much of the excitement from the
rest of the movement. In the Agnus Dei, Martin separates the two choirs
musically, the one singing a slow-moving, chordal accompaniment under a
unison melody in the other. This is beautifully sung, and the difficult
balance between the two choirs is perfectly judged but as the music rises to
its climax the emotional content of the music is almost unbearably intense,
and its very restraint only adds to this. In this performance the moment
passes for distressingly little, as do the deeply moving final bars, as
powerful a prayer of peace as you will encounter anywhere in music. The
heart must not be on the sleeve when performing Frank Martin’s music; but,
conversely, simply respecting what is in the score should allow for a more
expressive performance than this one.
In 1997 the Choir of Westminster Cathedral under James O’Donnell recorded
this work for Hyperion, a disc that won a Gramophone Award. The pain in the
tenors’ voices as they announce the crucifixion is heart-rending, and more
than the present choir is able, or wants to, convey. Those who don’t care
for children’s voices in the soprano line are missing out, but will probably
prefer the more mellifluous performance from the RIAS-Kammerchor and Daniel
Reuss on Harmonia Mundi. Convinced Martin admirers should try to seek out a
flawed but extraordinarily intense live performance from the BBC Singers and
John Poole, once available on a BBC Radio Classics CD and surely a candidate
for wider availability.
William Hedley
