A century before Leonard Bernstein was bringing the Roman Catholic Mass to the Upper West Side, Anton Bruckner was bringing the Walküren to the Roman Catholic Mass. At least according to critics.
There is a new recording of Bruckner’s Mass in F minor on the Rondeau label with a chorus and orchestra from Mainz conducted by Karsten Storck. The soloists are Jutta Hörl, Gudrun Pelker, Thorsten Büttner and Derrick Ballard.
The recordings was made on April 29, 2018. It was added to the Naxos Music Library on November 2, 2018. It should be available through iTunes and Amazon.
The relevance of Bruckner here on Daily Kos is tenuous, and today I’m justifying it with a tweet posted in the 19th Century composer’s name about a couple of weeks ago:
Though Bruckner died in 1896, some read his Ninth Symphony as a premonition of World War I.
I do seriously doubt Bruckner would have foreseen his Symphonies would be popular in Germany under the Hitler regime, while his Masses and other religious music sunk to obscurity.
Nor could he have foreseen the current perception of him now, the idea that he was a completely forgettable and anonymous composer until suddenly somehow becoming a genius around 1870.
Now, I’d be proud to have written something like the Mass in D minor at 40-years-old. At 42 he followed that with a Mass in E minor that is unique in being one of a very small group of “oboe masses.”
And then at 44, he wrote the first draft of the Mass in F minor. Although he did revise it later on, almost to the end of his life, the changes were such that hardly anyone besides the performers would be aware of them.
The Rondeau recording is of a performance that took place in Mainz at the request of a retiring Mainz bishop.
The Kyrie doesn’t feel too different from other recordings, though it is slower than all the recordings in my collection except for Celibidache’s. Clocking in at slightly more than 77 minutes, Celibidache turns Bruckner’s Mass into a sort of Buddhist anthem.
Storck’s interpretation, barely surpassing the hour mark, is more conventional in regards to tempi. But it is unconventional among the widely available recordings in that the recording took place in a cathedral, not a concert hall nor a studio.
There seems to be a consensus that the Mass in F minor is a concert mass. That’s supported by such details as the fact that Bruckner actually wrote out for the choir to sing “Gloria in excelsis Deo” and “Credo in unum Deum,” rather than relying on a priest to chant those words.
The acoustics as captured by the recording engineers, are fairly precise, with a satisfying long reverb at cadences that could turn the music into a blurry mess, but doesn’t.
Storck takes the Gloria and Credo somewhat faster than I’d expect for having taken the Kyrie so slowly. And this is where the nervous energy comes through.
The brass are grand, but also a bit confrontational, and the strings, though as virtuosic as would be needed in a mass by Michael Haydn, give an impression of nervousness rather than effortless breakneck virtuosity.
There are certain recordings that make me feel that the flute is a very cold instrument. This is one such recording. The coldness of the flutes in the Incarnatus more than offsets the warmth of the solo violin and solo viola.
The Sanctus and Benedictus in this recording further reinforce the unsettled feeling of the Gloria and Credo.
Robert Simpson saw Bruckner’s Symphonies as a quest for pacification. Even the finale of the Eighth Symphony, with its bleak moments that might suggest a tragic ending to a first time listener, is still calmer and more assured than what has gone on before in that work, even the seemingly triumphant Scherzo.
Maybe Storck feels this idea also applies to the Mass in F minor. In the Agnus Dei, we acknowledge that the whole world sins. We repent and ask God to grant us peace.
And even if we don’t believe in God, we still have a need for repentance, atonement and meditation.
I still Eugen Jochum’s recording of Bruckner’s Mass in F minor on the Deutsche Grammophon label is the best available recording. However, Storck’s recording is quite well worth listening to.