Frank Martin, an intensely devout man, wrote that his
Mass
for Double Choir was meant as “something between God
and me”. Most of the work was composed in 1922, but then
the composer set it aside until 1926. True to his feelings about
the work, he then withheld it for nearly four decades, the first
performance only taking place in 1963. It is one of the greatest
works in the unaccompanied choral repertoire.
Kodály’s
Missa Brevis started out as a work
for organ alone, to accompany the different parts of the service
with appropriate music. The composer then broadened it into the
work for choir and organ that is recorded here, and later still
he produced a version with orchestra. The first performance took
place in February 1945, at the Budapest Opera. This sounds glamorous,
but that was far from the case, as the city was under siege and
for security reasons the work was given in one of the cloakrooms.
In spite of the grandeur of the organ part, the
Missa Brevis retains
elements of its folk origin, reflecting its original liturgical
use in country churches. There are moments of drama, whilst others
retain a childlike playfulness. It is a masterpiece.
BRKLASSIK is the label of Bavarian Radio. All the more surprising,
then, that the booklet is so disappointing. The Artistic Director
of the Bavarian Radio Chorus, and conductor on this disc, Peter
Dijkstra, looks very fetching in his photograph, and it’s
good to have information about him and about the choir. But the
programme note is inadequate, omitting important information
in favour of observations which are ambiguous, dubious or, in
the case of the premise on which the final paragraph is built,
simply wrong. Then most music lovers might - and I put it no
higher than that - be familiar enough with the text of the Mass
not to need it printed in the booklet. The same, however, cannot
be said for the words of Poulenc’s
Litanies à Vierge
Noire: these are essential. For women’s voices and
organ, the Poulenc was perhaps a strange choice to end this collection,
but it is a strikingly beautiful work, and receives an excellent
performance here, one which demonstrates well the contrast between
the devout, inward nature of much of the music and the few dramatic
passages.
Listening to the Poulenc one is immediately struck by the beauty
of the sound. The women’s voices are rich and pure, and
the organ, superbly recorded with a real feeling of the building,
sounds wonderful. Let me add to this a remarkable clarity of
texture, immediately audible in the opening organ solo of the
Kodály. Every strand can be heard, every note of every
chord. The instrument, the acoustic, the outstanding work of
the sound engineers, all these play their part, but above all
I salute the superb phrasing and registration of the organist
Max Hanft. I have rarely heard more beautiful choral sound than
this, and blend, unanimity and tuning are all impeccable. Why,
then, does the performance ultimately fail to satisfy? Kodály’s
Mass is essentially an unsophisticated work, but Dijkstra seems
unwilling to see it that way, and conducts a rather interventionist
performance. The first signs of this are when he makes too much
of the accents at the end of the
Kyrie, though I dismissed
this on first hearing as simply a point of view different from
my own. The
Gloria which follows is marked
Allegro,
but Dijkstra’s tempo is sober, weighty rather than exuberant.
The soloists in
Qui tollis sing in a forthright, almost
operatic style, and the tempo, marked
Adagio, is very
slow indeed, surely too slow, lachrymose at this speed, a metronome
point too far. Dijkstra then ruins the stunning “Amens” by
inserting a dramatic silence just before the first one. In the
Credo,
the sopranos phrase “Deum de Deo” should sound like
trumpets, but it’s too smooth and beautiful here, as is
the
Crucifixus, which should be harrowing. As a final
example, you’d never know that the phrase “Confiteor
unum baptisma” was only marked
Poco sostenuto (a
little sustained) in the score. The Mass ends with an
Ite,
missa est for solo organ to which Kodály later added
choral parts. It is this choral version which is given here,
a valid choice, if only because the composer encouraged it, but
the effect of framing the work with solo organ music is lost.
Many of my misgivings spill over into the performance of Martin’s
sublime Mass. In this work a deeply religious man who also happens
to be a composer of genius, explores the mysteries of faith.
Martin was Swiss and of Calvinist stock. He was also devoted
to the music of Bach. For these reasons the music of his Mass
is passionately expressive whilst maintaining a certain classical
reserve, almost as if showing too much feeling would be improper
in the circumstances. This tension leads to moments where the
music is almost unbearably intense. In this reading tempi tend
to be on the slow side, that in a score littered with indications
such as “do not drag”, “with movement” and
even, at one point, “with élan”. Furthermore,
the conductor frequently lingers at the ends of phrases, lengthens
silences and so on. The result, near-criminal in this work, is
that some passages sound sentimental. This is true of much of
the
Kyrie, especially the end, where simple observance
of the score’s demands - a
sudden slowing of tempo
six bars before the end - would better have served the composer’s
intentions. The striking passage in the
Gloria beginning
with the words “Domine Deus, Agnus Dei” is far too
slow, and unnecessarily so, since the effect is already achieved
by the held chords in the second choir, complete with bottom
Ds.
Et incarnatus, simply marked “slow”, suffers
similarly. The
Agnus Dei is a miracle of musical alchemy,
its expressive power almost at bursting point whilst at the same
time a perfect example of restraint and personal and musical
humility. Not here: Dijkstra takes an indulgent 5:21 over it,
whereas one of my preferred readings gets through it, to far
greater effect, in 4:17. One last point: the next to last bar
of the work, the first syllable of the word “Pacem”,
contains five beats, 2 + 2 + 1. Almost all conductors tend to
hold on the final beat of the bar, a mistake in my view. In Dijkstra’s
hands the five beats become six, calm and comforting, inappropriately
so.
These are among the most beautiful performances of the two marvellous
masses that I have heard, but both rather miss the point. There
is a very fine performance of the Kodály by Danish forces
on Chandos, with the final movement given in its choral version.
As to the Martin, the performance which in my view comes closest
to that extraordinary amalgam of passion and restraint is a live
one, warts and all, from the BBC Singers under John Poole, recorded
in 1980 and once available on the BBC Radio Classics label. There
is a wonderful alternative available, though, on Hyperion, from
the Choir of Westminster Cathedral under James O’Donnell.
This performance features boys’ voices, of course, but
they seem ideally suited to the nature of the music, and their
upper register is absolutely thrilling. Luckily for us, they
also recorded the Kodály, also for Hyperion, which is
my preferred version of that work too.
William Hedley
Max Hanft (organ) 
