If any work's greater than it can be performed it's the h-moll Messe. There's no such thing as a perfect performance, nor can there ever be. But for me, there's clearly one that takes in more of what's great about it than any other. Harnoncourt, 1968, still in his late 30s, a completely different sort of conductor than he would later be.
The ultimate paradox of Bach, perhaps the ultimate paradox in all of music, is that Bach is pure dry mathematical form, and yet he is the ultimate proof that mathematics has emotion.
While Harnoncourt contrasts more dynamically between loud and soft than nearly anyone, there is nothing here of Harnoncourt's characteristic personal interjections. There is simple, pure form. Harnoncourt should have clarified the textures much more, and the sound is incredibly artificial, but every tempo but the Sanctus is absolutely perfect so you can appreciate both on the micro and macro levels. On the micro level, even if the textures could be clearer, the tempi are absolutely perfect for appreciating how every single detail along the way contributes to the whole, and on the macro level, the pacing is so perfect to lift the Messe into the air as a single organic construction.
There's also the issue of the boy choir - which, to me at least, feels as much as though it's something Bach's always missing as any period instruments. Bach was as true believing a Protestant as Lutherans got, and for better or worse, anything which smacked of refulgence or decadence would have gotten the conductor thrown out of the organ loft. There is much obviously to recommend about using a mixed choir, but even if only women soloists have the professionalism to make the arias sound right, an all male choir simply fits this music like a glove in a manner a mixed choir does not.
To me, Bach performance hit a golden moment around 1970, at the beginning of the HIP movement's eminence, when both HIP and traditional performances could not help but be influenced by one another. No longer did we have 200-member amateur choirs who grew up in Victorian choral societies, and could barely get through the music even at tempi 30% too slow, nor did we have generations of slick professionals surrounded by pop music, who emphasize Bach's dance rhythms at the expense of his spirituality.
Not everything before or after this era was terrible, and not everything in this era was great. But this performance and Leonhardt's in the 1980s are the only two B-Minor Masses I know which sound as though they are conducted the way Walcha or Ruzickova or Tureck play the keyboards (and Leonhardt obviously...). You'd think severity of their approach makes the music colder, but by not yielding, the music gains everything. It's the kind of music that makes everything about your life feel understood and heard and assures you that to everything in life there is a season. Hearing Harnoncourt conduct the B-Minor Mass is like your first experience of an eglise in France or a duomo in Italy. You did not know that the story of being alive could be told in a building until you exist in such spaces, and afterwards your life is forever larger
No comments:
Post a Comment