Breathing life into Bach’s great mass
John Eliot Gardiner (conductor)
Monteverdi Choir
SDG SDG722
Does anyone oxygenate Bach like John Eliot Gardiner? His rhythmic vitality and precisely etched immediacy are mesmerising. Of course, not everyone likes their Bach oxygenated to the max, but his is an instantly recognisable thumbprint, and the 1985 recording with the Monteverdi Choir set the bar for B minor Masses that followed. Thirty years on, however, Gardiner reassessed his own benchmark with often startling results.
In the intervening years, what had seemed initially like a maverick sideshow had started to gain traction – bringing with it a revelatory clarity of texture, the one-to-a-part approach advocated by American conductor and scholar Joshua Rifkin was increasingly turning mainstream. And just as Gardiner’s stance against choral society massed voices in their hundreds had once seemed
Gardiner’s second thoughts are flair-full, risk-taking and characteristically bold
radical, so David Cameron’s jibe across the despatch box to Prime Minister Tony Blair, ‘you were the future once’, might now have seemed to apply to Gardiner. His response? To pour cold water over Rifkin and co’s approach and, in his 2015 recorded rematch, to up his choral forces as if blowing a well-aimed raspberry.
Now here’s the strange thing. Without subverting his grandly conceived respect for a cornerstone of the canon, to its monumentality is, paradoxically, added a new intimacy and a lightness of touch, without sacrificing any of the old trademark ‘max factor’. Launched with the velocity of an Exocet cruise missile, the Cum Sancto Spiritu shaves over 20 seconds off the class of 1985’s sprint to the finish.
Yet in one respect there’s a radical concession to the times. Where once solos and duets were considered the domain of ‘star’ imports – setting arias apart, inevitably dislocating the communality of the performance as a whole – the 2015
recording for the most part draws the soloists directly from the choir as Bach would have done. It’s not all gain, perhaps. And some will prefer 1985 over 2015 or perhaps wish for a synthesis of the best from each. But, forced to come reluctantly off the fence, there are contentious decisions to be made. Throwing caution to the wind in the belief that vanilla compromises are a fudge, and with three equally recommendable (if less challenging alternatives) in reserve, it’s Gardiner’s second thoughts – flair-full, risk-taking, characteristically bold – that ultimately clinch it.