Mariss Jansons was one of the most important conductors of our time, celebrated worldwide and held in the highest regard – all the more so since his unexpected death on December 1, 2019. "Mariss Jansons - The Edition," comprising 70 recordings and a box set in representative LP format, documents the final phase of his life and career: his work as chief conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Bavarian Radio Chorus between 2003 and 2019. Predominantly live recordings from Munich, Tokyo, Vienna, New York, Waldsassen, and the Vatican enable listeners to experience for themselves musical highlights that are as moving as they are exciting. The set contains a remarkably diverse repertoire, ranging from symphonic music and great choral works to opera, and from the First Viennese School to 20th century classical music. "Mariss Jansons - The Edition" contains works by a broad range of composers, including complete cycles of the symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler respectively. It is supplemented by fascinating rehearsal recordings that bear witness to Jansons's trusting artistic collaboration with the musicians in his orchestra, together with a large-format, approximately 72-page-long booklet containing background information, essays, an interview, and a detailed track listing.

SUMMARY OF MAJOR WORKS:

Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1-9 (No. 9 appears twice)

Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique

Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1-4 (No. 4 appears twice)

Bruckner: Symphonies Nos. 3-4; 6-9

Mahler: Symphonies Nos. 1-9 (Symphonies Nos. 3-4, 6, & 8 are FIRST RELEASES)

Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3 ("Organ")

Schoenberg: Gurre-Lieder

Schubert: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 8 (9); ("The Great")

Schumann: Symphony No. 1

Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 5-7, 9-10

Stravinsky: Petrouchka, Firebird, & Rite of Spring

Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos. 4-6; Pique Dame

Verdi: Requiem

On November 8, 2019, at Carnegie Hall, New York, during a tour with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and only a few weeks before his unexpected death, Mariss Jansons conducted his final concert. On the programme was Johannes Brahms’ Fourth Symphony and the latter’s famous Hungarian Dance No. 5 was played as an encore. The live recording in Carnegie Hall, released here for the first time on Vinyl by BR-KLASSIK, is the great conductor’s musical legacy. For the last seventeen years of his life – from 2003 to 2019 – Mariss Jansons was chief conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Bavarian Radio Chorus. Both ensembles and their conductor appreciated each other deeply on an artistic as well as a human level, and this resulted in numerous unforgettable concerts. Jansons’ unrelenting demands on himself and his musicians, his always respectful treatment of his colleagues, and his great devotion to music all played a lead role in their work together. Mariss Jansons occupies a place of honor in the orchestra’s history, and its players will always revere and cherish his memory. With the death of Mariss Jansons one year ago, the music world lost one of its greatest artistic personalities.

Mahler’s "Das Lied von der Erde” (The Song of the Earth) is subtitled “A symphony for tenor, alto (or baritone) voice and orchestra". It examines the border between two different genres: the Lied, in its extended form as a song cycle, and the symphony. And as ever in Mahler’s music, that border is anything but black and white. The work certainly differs radically from a mere song cycle: the Lieder are permeated by symphonic techniques and some symphonic movements are built up from huge stanzas. Interludes expand to become development sections in which important things happen. Indeed, the thematic events take place in the orchestra, and, in a certain sense, the soloists also form a part of the interwoven orchestral texture. The sequence of movements also follows that of a symphony: In the weighty outer movements one clearly notices sonata form shining through the stanza structures, and symphonic processes are obviously taking place. Two inner movements take the place of the slow movement and sarcastic scherzo. The entire work is spanned by a taut arc, culminating – in accordance with the principle of intensification – in a huge final movement lasting as long as all the others together, and entitled Der Abschied (The Farewell). Here, Mahler is continuing the genre of the “Finale Symphony”, and the brightening of C minor to C major is even reminiscent of his usual apotheoses.

In this symphony, as in his others, Mahler wanted to "create a world using all existing technical means.” The formal design of the work is unique, and the demands it places on its performers are extreme. It requires two highly experienced Lied singers, who in combination with the huge orchestral apparatus have to be able to perform as soloists while blending into the symphonic structure as concert voices. An excellent and well-coordinated body of sound is needed here, and of course a highly competent conductor to ensure cohesion and to give spirit and soulfulness to such a large-scale work.

REVIEW

What is perhaps most immediately striking is the detail and brilliance of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra’s playing. Skelton makes a fine, handsome sound and offers something special in his moving reactions to the poetry. Kožená in her songs offers singing of supreme beauty. In fact, she sings almost too beautifully at times. Not a conventional Lied, perhaps, but a fascinating and beguiling one: highly recommended.

–Gramophone

Anton Bruckner's symphonies were a constant part of the repertoire for Mariss Jansons and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. The existing recordings - almost all the great Bruckner symphonies – are important documents of Jansons’ deep understanding of the works, and the high musical quality of the recordings also testifies to the long Bruckner tradition at the BRSO. Jansons followed Bruckner’s notes and markings with painstaking precision, and listening to a recording with the score reveals again and again how closely the conductor studied these works with the musicians of his orchestra. Bruckner's symphonies form the backbone of Late Romantic symphonic music. To a certain extent, Bruckner reinvented the symphony – something that not even Liszt or Wagner had dared to do in the wake of the groundbreaking masterpieces of Beethoven, which until then had been considered the culmination and conclusion of the genre. It was Bruckner and, somewhat later, Brahms who sought and found new methods of reviving the symphonic genre and developing it further. In this regard, Bruckner's approach was entirely new. From the outset, he relied on the sound of the large orchestra and, rather than mixing the individual groups of instruments, he tended to either separate them from each other or couple them together like organ registers (with which, as an organist, he was very familiar). Terraced dynamics, that is, the immediate juxtaposition of piano and forte without transition, was also something Bruckner derived from organ music. As a church musician, he had close contact with these and other elements of Baroque music, and they flowed into his symphonies. As far as dramaturgical development was concerned, he tended to favor Schubert; indeed, it was the organic continuation and alternating interconnection of themes Bruckner had learned from Schubert that also explains the unprecedented performance length of his symphonies.

My colleagues, Dan Morgan and Michael Cookson have already reported very enthusiastically on this release and it’s easy to see – or hear – why. By coincidence, on the morning before I listened to this disc for the last time before writing my review I heard on BBC Radio 3 Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s recording of Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with Rafael Kubelik and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, a recording made in the 1960s, I believe. That was a very neat coincidence for two reasons. Firstly on account of the thematic links between that set of songs and the First Symphony and secondly because, under Kubelik, the orchestral contribution had that fresh, open-air sound that characterizes so much of this present recording, especially in the first movement.

Right from the start I was impressed by the lovely, natural sound. The engineers have produced a very sophisticated, clean recording which allows detail to register yet also presents a very fine overall aural picture of the orchestra. So, for example, in the early pages the woodwind and the distant trumpets are beautifully balanced. Nézet-Séguin produces just the right amount of tension; you feel that Nature is stirring. When Mahler introduces his song ‘Ging heut Morgen übers Feld’ as his principal theme the music sounds fresh and Spring-like. I admire the way in which the conductor adds just the right little touches of rubato; nothing is overstated and, furthermore, the music seems to wear an effortless smile. As the movement progressed I admired very much not only Nézet-Séguin’s choice of tempi but also his management of tempo changes; this is yet another way in which the reading seems very natural. This conductor evidences a fine understanding of Mahler, not least in the way that he brings out, without affectation, the details of Mahler’s orchestration. At 13:38, only a couple of minutes before the end of the movement, Mahler finally unleashes the full orchestra – a glorious sound in this performance – and you realise how comparatively restrained has been most of what has gone before. From this point onwards the conclusion of the movement is packed with energy and high spirits.

The Scherzo is given an ideal amount of weight yet Nézet-Séguin also ensures dynamism. The trio (from 3:35) is gently nostalgic. Here the playing is very refined indeed and the music is warmly inflected. Once again I’m impressed by the very subtle and appropriate use of rubato. When the scherzo material returns it’s played ‘mit Schwung’ and I love the contrast between this music and the trio, which really comes to the fore in this reading.

The ‘Bruder Martin’ opening of the third movement is suitably spooky. At first the music is subdued, as it should be, and Nézet-Séguin and his splendid orchestra manage its growth very successfully. Mahler’s sound world is expertly brought to life. The delivery of the ‘Lindebaum’ episode (5:37 – 7:10) is simply exquisite with both the string and woodwind sections offering ravishing playing; everything in this passage is so subtly done. The return to the ‘Bruder Martin’ music is marvelously atmospheric.

From the hushed ending of the third movement, superbly played, the finale erupts like a torrent. The opening is enormously impressive; the playing has great power and is very incisive. These first minutes are very exciting indeed and white-hot tension is generated. By contrast, the gorgeous, long-breathed string melody (3:40 – 6:26) has great beauty with the conductor and orchestra attentive to every dynamic nuance. I should also say that Nézet-Séguin prepares for the arrival of the great melody in a masterful fashion. The return to turbulence is hugely powerful but shortly thereafter there’s a brief passage (7:43 – 8:06) when the strings and brass play so quietly as to create the illusion that they’re at a distance. This epitomises, to me, the playing and engineering skill that has gone into this recording. At the other end of the dynamic spectrum the closing pages (from 16:39) are thrillingly played without the slightest suspicion that the tone is being forced and the recording conveys the full orchestral might effortlessly. The grandiose ending is exultant and uplifting with the Bavarian horns and brass in full cry. There’s no applause at the end but I bet that the audience went wild at the concerts from which this recording derives.

This is, quite simply, one of the finest performances of Mahler’s First that I can recall hearing, whether on disc or live. The orchestral playing is magnificent while the interpretation itself is characterised by scrupulous attention to detail, by freshness and by an easily-worn sophistication. To date I’ve not heard too much of the work of Yannick Nézet-Séguin but on this evidence I’m not surprised he’s so highly rated; no wonder the Philadelphia Orchestra snapped him up. As for the recording itself, BR Klassik almost invariably produce good sound but this effort is out of the top drawer. I had hoped we would include this disc in the most recent session in the MusicWeb International Listening Studio. Time was against us on that occasion but this CD is definitely worthy of an audition next time.

Until a few weeks ago if I’d been asked to recommend a recording of Mahler’s First I would have nominated from those versions that I’ve heard the magnificent performances – both of them live - by Bernstein and the Concertgebouw (review) or by Tennstedt and the LPO (review). This superb newcomer now most certainly joins that very select shortlist.

– MusicWeb International (John Quinn)

The Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks can be heard here performing highlights of sacred choral music dating from the Baroque period to modern times. Even today, three hundred years later, the large oratorio choirs by Bach and Handel are as vivid, realistic and captivating as ever. Haydn succeeded in preserving this for the sacred music of the Wiener Klassik era, which reached its peak in Beethoven's Missa solemnis. The heartfelt masses composed by Schubert are typical of early German Romanticism, Gounod's St. Cecilia Mass is the French equivalent here, and Dvořák's Stabat Mater represents Bohemian Romanticism of the mid- to late 19th century.

Verdi's famous Messa da Requiem testifies to the close relationship between Italian opera and Italian church music. The Mass written just before the end of World War II by the Hungarian composer Kodály is still Late Romantic in its musical language, while in his Berlin Mass, written shortly before the start of the 20th century, the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt maintains the Tintinnabuli style that informs and inspires his work. This representative cross-section of well-known and some less well-known choral numbers spans a period of almost three hundred years, impressively demonstrating not only what gives choral music its special character and aura, but also what has changed over the centuries and what has remained largely similar. Furthermore, it testifies to the unique choral culture of the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks and to the "crystal clear sound" and "immense plasticity" of its performances, which are regularly praised in the highest terms, along with supreme artistic quality of its interpretations.

Poppe’s composition Fett for orchestra dates from 2018/19 and was commissioned by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and its artistic director Gustavo Dudamel, and "musica viva". Enno Poppe is one of the most important younger representatives of New Music. His composition I cannot remember anything for chorus, organ and orchestra, based on words by Marcel Beyer, was written between 2005 and 2015 as a commission for Bayerischer Rundfunk’s "musica viva". The first performance in Germany was recorded on May 8, 2015 in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz. The album edition of the “musica viva” series, founded in June 2000 to document the concert series that has existed since 1945, contains selected live recordings of “musica viva” concerts. An integral part of the edition is made up of concerts by the ensembles of the Bayerischer Rundfunk, guest recordings by international orchestras and ensembles, and also historical recordings. With two or three new releases per year, the main focus of the edition -which sees itself primarily as a series for composers –is mainly on portrait albums.

The British composer Edward Elgar wrote a great deal more than just his “Pomp & Circumstance” marches: his highly diverse oeuvre encompasses symphonies, concertos, chamber works, piano music and numerous choral works (oratorios, cantatas and partsongs). On this release, partsongs by Elgar can be heard with and without accompaniment as part of a representative selection of live and studio recordings. The album begins with the song cycle “From the Bavarian Highlands” op. 27; its six cheerful numbers were written while Elgar and his wife were on holiday in Garmisch in 1895. Alice Elgar had sketched verses from Bavarian folk melodies, and Upper Bavarian songs and dances can be heard in her husband’s settings. These were happy memories of carefree holidays in a region rich in music and full of fine landscapes. The Bavarian Radio Chorus, conducted by Howard Arman, sings the songs in their original version with piano accompaniment (the orchestral version came later). As a composer of English-language choral songs, Elgar is still little-known on the European mainland; in the United Kingdom, however, the situation is very different. The country has long had a lively choral scene, focusing primarily on English music – from Purcell and Handel to Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford and Elgar, all the way to Benjamin Britten and today’s contemporary composers. The program on this release has been compiled and conducted by the Englishman Howard Arman, one of today’s most knowledgeable experts on British choral music and artistic director of the Bavarian Radio Chorus, and these recordings should do much to boost the popularity of this highly appealing music on the European mainland as well.

Bruckner's symphonies form the backbone of Late Romantic symphonic music. Indeed, he can be said to have reinvented the symphony – something that not even Liszt or Wagner had dared to do in the wake of the groundbreaking masterpieces by Beethoven that until then had ranked as the climax and end-point of the genre. It was Bruckner and, somewhat later, Brahms who sought and found new methods of reviving the symphonic genre and developing it further. In this regard, Bruckner's approach was entirely new.

From the outset, he relied on the sound of the large orchestra, and rather than mixing the individual groups of instruments he tended to either separate them from each other or couple them together like organ registers. Terraced dynamics, that is, the immediate juxtaposition of piano and forte without transition, was also something Bruckner derived from the organ. As a church musician, he had close contact with these and other elements of Baroque music, and they flowed into his symphonies.

As far as dramaturgical development was concerned, he tended to favor Schubert; indeed, it was the organic continuation and alternating interconnection of themes Bruckner had learned from Schubert that also explains the unprecedented performance length of his symphonies.

Bruckner's Nine Symphonies are a constant in the repertoire of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, as in those of all major orchestras. The special feature of the release being presented here by BR KLASSIK is that the recordings are conducted by not only one but a total of four conductors closely associated with the orchestra, all of them proven international Bruckner experts. More than in any other compilation, common features in interpretation (also due to the same orchestra) as well as fascinating differences due to the various interpretive approaches of the respective conductors can all be detected. In these recordings it also becomes clear what brilliant contributions Herbert Blomstedt, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons and Lorin Maazel have made over the decades to Bruckner’s symphonic oeuvre.

REVIEW:

Here we have a marvelous collection of Anton Bruckner’s symphonies Nos. 1-9 played by the Bavarian Radio Symphony under the baton of four outstanding conductors. Lorin Maazel recorded the first two symphonies in 1999. He does not provide any new insights, but the performances are thrilling nevertheless. The fifth and sixth symphonies with Haitink are also wonderful interpretations, but Blomstedt’s Ninth and the recordings with Jansons are more fluent and warmer than the other performances. Blomstedt offers an interpretation aimed at salvation, without any fear of death. This positive view is good for the music, but also enables profound moments of contemplation. For Jansons one could summarize and say that Jansons inspires his orchestra to a breathtakingly intense playing. From the very beginning one feels the strong lyrical and luminous power providing an eloquent, rhetoric performance.

-- Pizzicato

The genesis of Anton Bruckner's Eighth Symphony was probably affected by a bout of sudden fame that boosted the composer's constantly shaky self-confidence. After the performance of Bruckner's Seventh, the famous conductor Hermann Levi had hailed him as "the greatest symphonist since the death of Beethoven". Frequently ridiculed in Vienna, Bruckner had finally been taken seriously in Munich: his importance had been recognized, and the Austrian emperor had awarded him the Order of Franz Joseph - something that filled Bruckner with very special pride. In the summer of 1884 he set to work on a new symphony, and in August 1887, after three years of work, the symphony was completed. Because of energetic objections from Levi, however, it was not immediately performed. Bruckner revised his work thoroughly between October 1887 and March 1890, and the premiere of the Eighth Symphony in it's new version finally took place on December 18, 1892, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under Hans Richter. It was an extraordinary success. Hugo Wolf described the concert as follows: "It was an absolute victory of light over darkness, and the storm of delighted applause was like some elemental manifestation of nature. In short, it was a triumph as complete as any Roman emperor could have wished for." Since then, Bruckner's Eighth Symphony has been an integral part of the symphonic repertoire, yet it still continues to present a huge challenge to performers. Mariss Jansons and the musicians of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks are however more than equal to the extraordinary demands made by this masterpiece. The recording of the Munich concert event of November 2017 has now been released by BR-KLASSIK: it is an exemplary performance of one of the most important compositions of the Late Romantic symphonic repertoire, in it's version of 1890.

The 2015 Munich concert year began at the end of January with two highlights: two performances of Bruckner's Sixth Symphony with Mariss Jansons conducting the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. The live recording, previously reserved exclusively for subscribers to the orchestra, is now being released on album by BR-KLASSIK - an outstanding interpretation of one of the most important compositions in the Late Romantic symphonic repertoire.

For a long time, Anton Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony (along with his Second) was regarded as something of a ‘poor relation’ in his immense symphonic oeuvre, even though the composer himself had moodily referred to it as his "boldest". In view of its performance figures and recordings over the decades, this has now changed significantly, and the work has earned itself a permanent place in the repertoire. The Sixth Symphony forms part of the creative process of the two preceding symphonies, the "Romantic" Fourth (1874/1880) and the Fifth (1875), and is now seen as an important preliminary stage in Bruckner’s last great upsurge that followed the composition of the "Te Deum" and culminated in the sublime grandeur of his final symphonies, the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth. Bruckner worked on his Sixth Symphony in A major (WAB 106) from September 24, 1879 to September 3, 1881. He was only able to hear the complete work at one orchestra rehearsal during his lifetime because only the two middle movements (Adagio and Scherzo) were publicly performed in the concert hall of the Vienna Musikverein on February 11, 1883. The first public performance of the symphony as a whole followed only on February 26, 1899 - two and a half years after the composer’s death. It was conducted by Gustav Mahler, who had, however, made changes to the score, presenting it in a radically shortened version.

It was on the borderline between High and Late Romanticism, where the style of the times was to change and finally dissolve, that Anton Bruckner once again conjured up the very essence of the Romantic attitude to life with his Fourth Symphony. It was the composer himself who gave the work its popular title "Romantic"; the name appears in much of his correspondence. – This "Romantic" symphony conjures up an ideal world in bright, unbroken colors, and looks back on an intact and carefree past. The consistently relaxed and positive mood of the symphony seems all the more astonishing when one considers the complicated history of the work’s genesis. The first version of 1874, a year of professional setbacks, was rejected by Bruckner after several plans for a premiere came to nothing; with relentless self-criticism, he referred to it as “overladen” and "too restless". In 1878 he subjected it to radical revision, in the course of which, among other things, a completely new third movement was written - the hunting scherzo. The other three movements were also profoundly reworked, partly shortened and formally condensed, and up to 1880 Bruckner repeatedly altered the final movement, which gradually grew into a crowning finale within the symphonic structure that would dissolve and overcome every last contradiction. It was in this version of 1878/1880, also the basis of this recording, that the Fourth Symphony was premiered on February 20, 1881 in Vienna, played by the Philharmonic under the baton of the Wagner aficionado Hans Richter. The performance was a great triumph, and marked a decisive change in the reception of Bruckner's music. His symphonic work to date had largely met with rejection, but now, with the "Romantic", he had made his breakthrough. As one of Bruckner’s most-performed works alongside the Seventh, the Fourth has remained just as successful to this day.

An unusual set that presents the complete cycle of nine Beethoven symphonies interspersed with commissioned works by Johannes Maria Staud, Misato Mochizuki, Rodion Shchedrin, Raminta Serksnyte, Giya Kancheli and Jörg Widmann. The modern works are in essence, reactions to or inspirations from the Beethoven symphonies. The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is under the direction of Mariss Jansons.

Hollow pathos is not his thing. From an artist like Mariss Jansons Friedrich Schiller's Ode: ''An die Freude'' must receive a far deeper significance, which also fully encompasses the doubt and profound hope embodied in this text. And thus, in Jansson's recording of the Ninth Symphony, the choral finale does not degenerate to mere superficial orgy of jubilation, but rather becomes a delicately balanced, wisely developed drama. On October 27, 2007 teh Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks played Beethoven's Ninth in the presence of the Pope in the Vatican. The recording of this memorable concert is now being released by Br-Klassik.

“From the heart, may it go to the heart.”
(Beethoven’s inscription on the manuscript score of his Missa Solemnis)

Last year at the Semperoper as part of the Dresden Musikfest 2014 I attended a disappointing performance of Beethoven’s great Missa Solemnis. Ivor Bolton was conducting a quartet of soloists, Balthasar-Neumann-Chor and the Dresdner Festspielorchester playing on authentic instruments. It was altogether below-par and I reckon the oppressive hot weather of the day affected not just the tuning of the strings but also the energy levels of the performers.

In view of that uninspiring Dresden concert when this new BR Klassik release arrived I was delighted to have the opportunity to reacquaint myself with the score. Recorded live at the Herkulessaal, Munich by the world class Chor und Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks the distinguished conductor Bernard Haitink has selected an impressive quartet of soloists.

The motivation behind Beethoven’s writing of the Missa solemnis was the appointment in 1819 of Archbishop Rudolph as Cardinal-Archbishop of Olomouc. Beethoven’s former piano and composition pupil and most valued patron, Archbishop Rudolph was the youngest son of Emperor Leopold II. Beethoven invested considerable time as well as emotional and spiritual energy on his Missa solemnis and didn’t complete this immense sacred score until 1823 some three years after Rudolph’s enthronement; a ceremony that used works by Haydn and Hummel instead. The Missa solemnis had to wait until 1824 for its première which was given not in a church setting but at a concert hall in Saint Petersburg. Incidentally, in 1807 Beethoven had composed a mass – a commission from Prince Nicholas Esterházy for the name day of his wife.

All Haitink's soloists here sing with unerring commitment and incisiveness. This is not always the case in performances of this work the quartet. They also manage to keep their operatic sensibilities under wraps and concentrate on the reverential aspect of the text. The highly appealing Salzburg-born soprano Genia Kühmeier excels with her eagerly bright and fluid tone. Another Austrian, Elisabeth Kulman is in splendid voice too. A refined well focused lyric mezzo, Kulman’s slightly dark timbre projects strongly, with clear and precise enunciation. In highly engaging voice English tenor Mark Padmore seems to improve each time I hear him. Here he displays creamy tone and impeccable diction all coupled with an eminently respectful projection of the sacred text. Dignified German bass-baritone Hanno Müller-Brachmann impresses with his steady, flexible tone and dark-edged hue. He has certainly become a singer to be reckoned with. Highlights include the uninhibited weighty outburst of praise in the Gloria. This is freighted with awe. I especially enjoyed the singing of Quoniam tu solus sanctus which sounded as effectively dramatic as one could wish. The Adagio of the Agnus Dei, the conclusion to the score, has few parallels in sacred music and captures an atmosphere of spiritual serenity.

The orchestra are fully engaged with the sacred drama with no shortage of relish whilst maintaining a resolutely cohesive whole. The vitality and drive generated by Haitink are major attributes of this memorable performance. Concertmaster Anton Barachovsky adopts a pleasing, rather understated approach to his violin solos in the Benedictus — an appropriately ethereal background to the solo voices. Consistently inspiring all evening the choir is excellent and clearly well prepared.

Recorded live in the inexorably reliable acoustic of the Herkulessaal, Munich the sound team can take a bow for the satisfying, clear and reasonably well balanced sonics. The booklet that accompanies the release includes full Latin texts with German and English translations.

Previously I have not felt entirely comfortable in nominating a stand-out first choice for the Missa solemnis but this release from Haitink and his Bavarian forces is as praiseworthy as any recording I have encountered.

-- Michael Cookson, MusicWeb International

Haitink at 85 makes his first recording of one of music’s choral masterpieces – and what a wonderful performance his wisdom and experience offers.
– Gramophone