Bach: Mass in B minor, BWV232
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J. S. BACH
Bach: Mass in B minor, BWV232
Lydia Teuscher, Ida Falk Winland, Tim Mead, Samuel Boden, Neal Davies / Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen
[ Hyperion / 2 CD ]
Release Date: Friday 10 July 2015
This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.
Arcangelo and their inspirational director Jonathan Cohen, one of the brightest stars in the Early Music galaxy, present Bach's great masterpiece in a glorious new recording made following a thrilling performance at the Tetbury festival.
Arcangelo are still a relatively new ensemble, but have already won one Gramophone Award and been nominated for another. The members of the choir and orchestra are performers of dazzling technical ability with a passion for faithful interpretation that goes far beyond historical understanding. Their previous recordings for Hyperion have been praised for their liveliness, colour and full string sound. In this new recording these aspects of their performance are alchemically combined with a feeling of the great solemnity of Bach's monumental achievement.
"Cohen's rejection of the generic, within a grand and ravishing overview, is what propels an overwhelming sense here that this reading deserves to be taken very seriously...The work infrequently speaks with such gracefulness, freedom or conviction." Gramophone Magazine Award Nomination 2015 - Baroque Vocal
"One might expect Cohen's Arcangelo to opt for minimal personnel - although the trumpety movements suggest spectacular forces - but his choir of 20 can convey the inward spirituality of Et incarnatus est and the laudatory éclat of the Gloria and Et resurrexit with equal efficacy." Sunday Times, 23rd November 2014
"Cohen's take side-steps Joshua Rifkin's premise that it should be sung one-to-a-part and fields a choir of 20...Cohen announces the Credo at an invigoratingly purposeful lick...Tim Mead's eloquently restrained Agnus Dei is crowned by a Dona nobis pacem whose blazing grandiloquence grips." BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2014 ****
"Gradually the ear responds to Jonathan Cohen's musically intelligent mix of period and mainstream traditions, delivered by top musicians...This account will please, especially, anyone trapped between the extremes of Bach performance practice, unsure how to choose a B minor mass from the numerous options on offer." The Observer, 30th November 2014 ****
"A performance that couldn't be bettered." MusicWeb International, April 2015
"[the] lines are finely shaped and their textures sound rich rather than heavy. This is a superbly conceived and executed set, absolutely joyous and gloriously colourful" Early Music Today, May 2015 *****
"There are many other equally illustrative comparative momemts throughout the performance, but the point is this one stands all on its own as a supreme example of how such an oddly constructed and historically controversial work can be artfully, intelligently conceptualized to render it as a unified musical and, considering Bach's possible motivations for its creation, defining masterpiece." 10/10 ClassicsToday
