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xsBusiness - Missa Solemnis in D major, op.123
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List Price: $11.98
Our Price: $79.35
Your Save: $ ( % )
Availability:
Manufacturer: EMI Classics
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0724356754720
Format: Original recording remastered
Label: EMI Classics
Manufacturer: EMI Classics
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: EMI Classics
Release Date: 2001-04-10
Studio: EMI Classics
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Missa solemnis
Comment: At the risk of sounding like a philistine, nothing of Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis" moves me. I purchased it after having read it praised by KR Jamison in her excellent book, "Exuberance," and reading that Beethoven considered it his best work. Unlike Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" and "Magnificat," or Vivaldi's "Gloria," I found none of the movements melodic. Given all the great music Beethoven composed, I would rank Missa rather low. Perhaps my taste may mature as I enter my 60s and may look back on this review with chagrin.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Missa Solemnis
Comment: OK, I'm probably going to get rocks thrown at me but...
I really wasn't that impressed with this, as a newcomer to classical music (and maybe I should come back to this later) I was much more impressed with other choral works (see especially Brahms German Requiem, or even Elgar's Dream of Gerontius). I'm sorry, I may be an ignoramus, but if your new to classical music like I am, go with Brahms' German Requiem.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Missa Solemnis new CD of a classic!
Comment: I remember the Klemperer phonograph recording from many years ago, when I was younger. It left an indelible impact and had not heard the Missa Solemnis for many years, until the CD was released by EMI Classics. Despite the recording being made over 40 years ago in 1965 it remains moving, uplifting and spiritual. The New Philharmonia Chorus was masterful and the quartet was well integrated. Listening to the music makes one wonder how could Beethoven write such dramatic and difficult to perform music. Otto Klemperer was 80 years old at the time of the recording and interestingly his son was Colonel Klink in Hogan's Heros. The low price is nice, however this is a recording that is justified at a much higher price. How in the world did the sopranos sustain the high Bb's in Credo (Et Vitam Venturi)? The end of the Gloria movement is the chorus proclaiming without instrumentation, "GLORIA".
This is a fitting salute to a glorious recording. Bill Turnage
Customer Rating:
Summary: vintage Beethoven perfectly performed
Comment: Beethoven was a tonal engineer who sought to channel mighty forces, and nowhere are they more powerful than in the Missa Solemnis. In this work Beethoven, the archetypical constructive composer, builds from scratch his conception of man's relation to the infinite. Although the textual framework is that of the religious mass, the conception is not religious in the ordinary sense but transcends it. Both highly personal yet universal, it points into the infinite. This tendency is present in all his greatest works and is responsible for the unfinished feeling -- the sense of having been left incomplete -- that they can give. In the Missa, too, we find the signature quirks of Beethoven -- the unprepared modulations, the seemingly arbitrary abruptness verging on impatience, the occasional imperfectly judged passage or repetition -- that remind us that yes, this is definitely Beethoven, and which in an ordinary composer could be considered flaws. Yet they are not so when taken in context. For Beethoven is concerned with the ongoing, and perfection would be incompatible with his goal. To put it another way, paraphrasing Stravinsky from his "Themes and Conclusions", Beethoven can sometimes be frustrating because we want what we love to be the way we want it to be. Well, it can't be that way, because then we would kill it; what Beethoven is concerned with is greater than any of us, and beyond even his power to describe fully.
The Missa is a difficult work to perform because of the disparate styles of its various parts. Loud fugato passages sit cheek by jowl with quiet sections of ethereal, otherworldly beauty, and some of the writing is surprisingly sensuous and romantically colored. Also much in evidence is the slow, ineffably expressive adagio which Beethoven invented and which occurs elsewhere in the late quartets, for example. Yet these sections when taken as a whole are not fundamentally incompatible. The conductor's problem is to keep focused on the ultimate goal and maintain an overall sense of direction, without getting mired in the exquisite details.
The ultimate test comes toward the middle of the Resurrexit, which is the crux of the matter and on which everything hangs. Many an interpretation will founder here. Not only is there a huge discontinuity, but the concluding vocal quartet is liable to seem puny in comparison, utterly trivial and pointless. The danger is great, for here the plate tectonics of Beethoven's mighty conception burst out and threaten to rupture the work. A thrilling kaleidoscopic succession of powerful inspirations builds and culminates in a majestic rising flood of sound. This flood has to be controlled. Klemperer solves the problem beautifully by tapering it not quite abruptly, yet within the space of a single measure, making it retreat into its classical matrix without extinguishing it. In this way he clinches the work and brings it safely home. Now the meaning of the ensuing quartet becomes clear: Having witnessed the incredible, humans bask in the afterglow of the divine.
Immeasurable in its greatness, both higher and deeper than anything else in music, this is the finest work of the most deeply and humanly moving of all composers.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Should you buy the latest remastering of this classic recording?
Comment: By any measure the Missa Solemnis is almost impossible to faithfully record, given that the engineers must find a way to balance orchestra, solo quartet, and a large chorus, a total of two hundred performers trying to live up to Beethoven's cosmic conception. Recording techniques have advanced a great deal since the early LP era, of course, but it's still fatiguing on the ear to listen to the Missa Solemnis squeezed down to room size.
EMI's remastering of Klemperer's classic 1965 account lowers the ear fatigue a little (the chorus doesn't "crunch" quite as much in loud passages) and clarifies some of the solo instruments and voices a bit, but is otherwise no great shakes. In its new single-disc format the recording is a bargain, but on the used market you can find the two-disc version, which sounds almost as good, for half the price, and it includes an excellent Choral Fantasy that was one of the highlights of the Barenboim-Klemperer concerto cycle.
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