Biber: Missa Christi resurgentis | Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, ......

Biber: Missa Christi resurgentis | Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, ... | Enjoyable Satisfacation

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Biber: Missa Chris...

	Biber: Missa Christi resurgentis Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, ... Harmonia Mundi Fr., 2005 average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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A splendid achievement

Andrew Manze has done much in recent years to popularize Biber's "other" music, i.e., pieces other than the justly-renowned Rosary Sonatas, and he scores another victory with this disc of a recently-rediscovered Mass setting.

When performed in a reverberant space, antiphonal music (like Biber's) can sometimes sound muddied or confused, as group clashes with group and line with line. Manze and his band avoid this pitfall, and keep the music intelligible while still using the spacious acoustic of London's Temple Church to create excitement at the climaxes. The instrumentalists are excellent; the singers are likewise, and blend nicely.

In addition to the Mass itself (tracks 2-4, 6, 8, 10) Manze gives us instrumental music that might have been used at an Easter Mass in Biber's Salzburg. I am particularly fond of the framing trumpet fanfares, and also of the sonata by Biber's contemporary Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, which has all the excitement of a piece by the Gabrielis with a delicious Austrian flavor.

Highly recommended.

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Enjoyable Satisfacation

I had listenned a few Biber's music, some are instrumnetal, ex mystery sonatas, die rosenkranz-sonaten, battalia,harmonia artificioso . some are vocal, requiem. Seldom I didn't like it. This time I try this Manze and the English Concert cooperate the Missa Christi Resurgentis, it is very impressive, and full colorful on instrument using, ex stringed and brass alternate with. You shouldn't treat it as a choir music.
Besides, manze served as both director and violin, he showed me another his skill. That's not what I saw in his playing on former CDs. It's worth trying, purchaing and collecting.

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Bifurcated! 3/5 Rating!

This disk is frustrating. Half of it is superb, but half is nearly unbearable. It starts well enough, with a stunning trumpet fanfare, a piece of real music played gloriously. The trumpeters play with aplomb throughout, by the way, something not entirely expected from English trumpeters. The second track is a small masterpiece, a sonata , played and recorded excellently. Trouble strikes when the choirs begin the Kyrie. Choirs must be fiendishly hard to record, since so many of the big Biber masses available suffer from a harsh car-radio quality of sound from the voices. In this case, the seven instrumental sonatas are a joy to listen to, crisp and realistic in timbre, while all the choral movements sound as if they were recorded by telephone.

Biber's chamber music is quickly becoming standard repertoire for Baroque ensembles. It's sonorous, complex, virtuosic, and fresh to our ears partly because it's NEW, having been neglected for so long. This disk also includes a Schmelzer sonata of high musical quality. One of the reasons why Manze's English Consort sounds so elegant on this disk is that the instruments are tuned authentically 1/6 comma meantone, instead of the modern equal temperament. The result is dramatic purity of tuning in moments of consonance and piquancy of tuning in suspensions and chromaticisms. Even if you know nothing about matters of temperament, your ears will hear the difference.

Perhaps the mean temperament backfired, however, on the usually so-dependable English choristers. There are glaring problems of tuning in the choral movements of the mass, and even some of the soloists, especially the males, have difficulties of pitch that come across as harshness. Oddly, the choirs seem to settle in tuning and timbre as the work progresses; the final vocal movement, the Agnus Dei, is by far the most satisfactory.

BIG music is as hard to record as it is to conduct. Perhaps harder. Biber's works for multiple choruses of voices and instruments, such as his Missa Salisburgensis, suffer even more from recording problems. As for the current CD, the instrumental tracks are five-star plus, but the vocal tracks deserve no more than three stars either for performance or for recording technology.

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