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Special offer. Mozart: Mass in C minor, K427 'Great'
Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Olivia Vermeulen (alto), Makoto Sakurada (tenor), Christian Immler (bass)
Bach Collegium Japan, Masaaki Suzuki
Awards:
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BBC Music Magazine, January 2017, Disc of the month
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Gramophone Magazine, December 2016, Editor's Choice
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Gramophone Awards, 2017, Winner - Choral
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Building a Library, September 2020, Recommended Recording
Stripping the score right back, Suzuki makes musicianship dominate. He taps into the subtle arts of his fellow performers, especially Carolyn Sampson, to create a benchmark performance…Sampson...
Special offer. Mozart: Mass in C minor, K427 'Great'
Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Olivia Vermeulen (alto), Makoto Sakurada (tenor), Christian Immler (bass)
Bach Collegium Japan, Masaaki Suzuki
Purchase product
Awards:
-
BBC Music Magazine, January 2017, Disc of the month
-
Gramophone Magazine, December 2016, Editor's Choice
-
Gramophone Awards, 2017, Winner - Choral
-
Building a Library, September 2020, Recommended Recording
Stripping the score right back, Suzuki makes musicianship dominate. He taps into the subtle arts of his fellow performers, especially Carolyn Sampson, to create a benchmark performance…Sampson...
About
Following on from the 2015 release of Mozart’s Requiem, Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan have gone on to record the composer's Mass in C minor, K427 – the ‘Great Mass’. As the nickname indicates, it is a work of unusual proportions for a mass of the Classical period – or would have been so, had Mozart completed it. It is not known, for what occasion Mozart intended the work, but a letter to his father Leopold, dated 4 January 1783, indicates that he may have committed himself to writing it in connection with his marriage to Constanze and a planned visit to Salzburg. A performance of parts of the Mass did take place in Salzburg in October 1783, with Constanze performing the prominent soprano part. Two years later Mozart reused the music from the Kyrie and Gloria sections in the sacred cantata Davidde penitente, K 469, but the Mass itself was left incomplete. The present performance includes the sections completed by Mozart himself, as well as those sections, for which extensive sketches by Mozart provided a basis for completion (by Franz Beyer in 1989). Three of Suzuki’s soloists also took part in the recording of the Requiem, while the Dutch mezzo-soprano Olivia Vermeulen makes her first appearance on BIS, shining in the aria ‘Laudamus te’. The disc closes with the celebrated cantata Exsultate, jubilate in which the soprano Carolyn Sampson glitters in the virtuosic solo part. As an appendix to the programme, she and the Bach Collegium Japan orchestra also repeats the initial aria, in a less well-known later version with a slightly different text and with flutes replacing the oboes of the original.
Contents and tracklist
- Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Olivia Vermeulen (mezzo-soprano), Makoto Sakurada (tenor), Christian Immler (baritone)
- Bach Collegium Japan Chorus, Bach Collegium Japan
- Masaaki Suzuki
- Recorded: November 2015
- Recording Venue: Saitama Arts Theater, Concert Hall, Japan
- Carolyn Sampson (soprano)
- Bach Collegium Japan
- Masaaki Suzuki
- Recorded: November 2015
- Recording Venue: Saitama Arts Theater, Concert Hall, Japan
Awards and reviews
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BBC Music MagazineJanuary 2017Disc of the month
-
Gramophone MagazineDecember 2016Editor's Choice
January 2017
Stripping the score right back, Suzuki makes musicianship dominate. He taps into the subtle arts of his fellow performers, especially Carolyn Sampson, to create a benchmark performance…Sampson arabesques effortlessly up to the stratosphere in a slow dance with solo woodwinds…the three other vocal soloists equal Sampson’s elegance, forging a blissful euphony in their ensembles
December 2016
Period-instrument C minor Masses get better and better. ...The choir are well drilled and the two female soloists are matched as well as any on disc...Suzuki is no speed merchant, and maintains the through line in more strenuous movements.
10th January 2017
A tremendous achievement.
13th November 2016
The Mass survives as one of the great unfinished works. Suzuki’s famed period forces are significantly enlarged here (24 choristers), but are quite small for this work. His tempi are surprisingly spacious, but the dramatic impact of the double-choir Qui tollis in the Gloria comes across with full force.
Early Music Today September 2017
The Bach Collegium Japan’s performance is thrilling, dynamic and totally committed: they rise to the challenge of the music’s solemn splendour, yet remain fully alive to its episodes of typically Mozartian tenderness. While the choruses are sung magnificently, the jewel here is soprano Carolyn Sampson, in the Constanze role: her ‘Christie eleison’ breaks through the Kyrie’s dark gravitas like a burst of sunlight, and her ‘Et incarnatus est’, with flute, oboe and bassoon interlaced around her soaring, swooping vocal lines, is meltingly beautiful.
Classical Ear 27th March 2017
playing and singing are excellent throughout, especially from the vocal soloists, all giving florid and characterful performances. The Exsultate, Jubilate makes an ideal filler, not least for the further opportunity it provides to hear soprano Carolyn Sampson, here on excellent form. The SACD audio is atmospheric and clear, giving an ideal audio image for the orchestra and soloists
