Name: Bernstein: Mass
Price: 26 USD
Availability: BackOrder

Listen on Presto Music. Free thirty day trial. Find out more.

…is a virtual triumph from beginning to end, and the only recording for me worthy of sitting next to the composer's own. …Alsop's tight-knit, symphonic pacing delineates the structure of the... — BBC Music Magazine, September 2009, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 17th Aug 2009
Catalogue No: 8559622-23
Label: Naxos
Series: American Classics
Length: 1 hour 43 minutes

Gramophone Magazine

September 2009

Disc of the Month
Gramophone Awards

2010

Editor's Choice

Purchase product

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Naxos - 50% off Hi-Res Downloads

Special offer ends: 16/07/2025

Bernstein: Mass

Work length1:43:38

$35.00

$45.45

Jubilant Sykes, Asher Edward Wulfman
Morgan State University Choir, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Peabody Children's Chorus
Marin Alsop

No. 1, Antiphon. Kyrie eleison

Track length1:58

$1.00

$1.30

No. 2, Hymn & Psalm. A Simple Song

Track length4:10

$1.00

$1.30

No. 3, Responsory. Alleluia

Track length1:08

$1.00

$1.30

No. 4, Prefatory Prayers

Track length4:59

$1.00

$1.30

No. 5, Thrice-triple Canon. Dominus Vobiscum

Track length0:41

$1.00

$1.30

No. 6, In Nomine Patris

Track length1:57

$1.00

$1.30

No. 7, Prayer for the Congregation. Almighty Father

Track length1:21

$1.00

$1.30

No. 8, Epiphany

Track length0:54

$1.00

$1.30

No. 9, Confiteor

Track length2:10

$1.00

$1.30

No. 10, Trope. I Don't Know

Track length1:41

$1.00

$1.30

No. 11, Trope. Easy

Track length4:50

$1.00

$1.30

No. 12, Meditation No. 1

Track length5:09

$1.00

$1.30

No. 13, Gloria Tibi

Track length1:54

$1.00

$1.30

No. 14, Gloria in Excelsis Deo

Track length1:15

$1.00

$1.30

No. 15, Trope. Half of the People

Track length0:59

$1.00

$1.30

No. 16, Trope. Thank You

Track length2:46

$1.00

$1.30

No. 17, Meditation No. 2

Track length3:38

$1.00

$1.30

No. 18, Epistle. The Word of the Lord

Track length5:50

$1.00

$1.30

No. 19, Gospel-sermon. God Said

Track length4:22

$1.00

$1.30

No. 20, Credo

Track length1:08

$1.00

$1.30

No. 21, Trope. Non Credo

Track length2:16

$1.00

$1.30

No. 22, Trope. Hurry

Track length1:20

$1.00

$1.30

No. 23, Trope. World Without End

Track length1:38

$1.00

$1.30

No. 24, Trope. I Believe in God

Track length2:06

$1.00

$1.30

No. 25, Meditation No. 3 (De Profundis, Pt. 1)

Track length2:31

$1.00

$1.30

No. 26, Offertory (De Profundis, Pt. 2)

Track length2:12

$1.00

$1.30

No. 27, The Lord's Prayer. Our Father

Track length1:15

$1.00

$1.30

No. 28, Trope. I Go On

Track length2:24

$1.00

$1.30

No. 29, Sanctus

Track length5:09

$1.00

$1.30

No. 30, Agnus Dei

Track length6:30

$1.00

$1.30

No. 31, Fraction. Things Get Broken

Track length14:21

$3.00

$3.85

No. 32, Pax. Communion. Secret Songs

Track length9:06

$2.00

$2.60

About
Reviews
Explore

About

Composer Guides, Leonard Bernstein

25th August 2018

On the composer's 100th birthday, Chris recommends some favourite recordings of his key works across all genres, from the ever-popular West Side Story to comparative rarities like Trouble in Tahiti and the song-cycles.

When Leonard Bernstein was asked by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to compose the inaugural piece for the opening of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D. C., he wrote ‘The Mass is also an extremely dramatic event in itself—it even suggests a theater work’.

Premièred on 8 September 1971, with additional words by Stephen Schwartz of Godspell fame, Mass is a remarkable visionary piece with a kaleidoscope of musical styles that touches on themes of political protest, existential crisis, and religious faith lost and found.

Reviews

September 2009

…is a virtual triumph from beginning to end, and the only recording for me worthy of sitting next to the composer's own. …Alsop's tight-knit, symphonic pacing delineates the structure of the work without diluting its exuberant eclecticism or softening its hard road towards spiritual reawakening: the final Communion is among the most moving passages ever recorded. She is no slouch, too, when it comes to that elusive Bernstein groove; if you aren't dancing around the room during the Gloria in Excelsis, you haven't got a soul to save, my friend!

2010

Bernstein's relationship with God is dangerous, probing, transformational.
There are those, of course, who proffer that Bernstein thought he was God, that's why he could stand in defiance against Him. But Mass reveals a man thirsting for faith but petrified of blind acceptance. Bernstein's religion was muscular and intellectualised, and the experience of Mass expands, rather than contracts, the further you travel towards the essence of its cosmology.
Alsop's Jubilant Sykes is the best of all possible Celebrants. There can be few roles in contemporary music theatre that demand so many sides of a performer. He must disentangle music of gnarly complexity; he needs an operatic sensibility, but must also swing like a hipster jazzer and declaim with authentic rockist swank. Sykes's voice shakes with James Brown's ecstasy, snarls with Janis Joplin-like indigence and projects through the labyrinth of Bernstein's tricky melodic contours like any trained voice would.
He was born to play this part.
Although she doesn't drive things quite as far as Bernstein, Alsop is pacey, creating a dramatic slipstream that is powered relentlessly onwards by the awkward discontinuities and jagged narrative.
Even if the atheist cannot quite love the God-fearing D major affirmation of the final scene, it doesn't matter. The journey, the process of discovery, counts for more.

September 2009

…Alsop's Jubilant Sykes is the best of all possible Celebrants. Mass follows the Celebrant to the darkest place a proselytiser for faith can travel - from sneaking doubt towards a full-scale breakdown as, in Bernstein's climactic scene, he trashes the altar and sends the sacraments scattering. Sykes brings an intensity that chills. Just as the Celebrant flips comes the most remarkable passage of all - a funky 10-bar refrain of "Dona nobis pacem"... Alsop ensure this passage pushes the Celebrant over the top... the orchestral playing too, here and throughout, is lusty and unafraid to let go.

Special offer. Bernstein: Mass

Purchase product

2 CDs

Downloads

Contents

Composer Guides, Leonard Bernstein

Download queue