Beethoven: Missa Solemnis album review – Savall goes back to basics for this daunting work

Having recorded all the symphonies with the period instruments of Le Concert des Nations, Jordi Savall concludes his Beethoven project with the final choral masterpiece. For Savall, the Missa Solemnis is “one of the most inestimable treasures of the human mind” and in performing it his aim was to “rediscover what is essential by going back to the autograph sources”. As well as a period orchestra he uses a chorus of just 36 voices, which may rob the great surging climaxes of some of their sonic grandeur, but does allow the more contrapuntal passages to move with easy athleticism.

Beethoven: Missa Solemnis album cover

Savall’s tempi never seem extreme, but one or two passages do drag a little – the opening adagio section of the Sanctus for instance, takes a while to move convincingly, though the explosion into the Pleni sunt coeli that follows is suitably joyous, while the dramatic effect of the trumpets and drums in Dona nobis pacem is as telling as always. The soloists are a mixed bag, with an operatic-sounding soprano Lina Johnson but a rather gravelly baritone Manuel Walser. It’s hard to know whether this performance does throw any new light on what is always a daunting work, as much for listeners as for its performers. There are plenty of alternative recordings of the Missa Solemnis of all complexions to investigate, from John Eliot Gardiner’s fleet, crystalline performance on period instruments to Herbert von Karajan’s achingly slow, traditionally pious account, before anyone needs to consider this one.