A good new recording of Bruckner's Mass in E minor is always welcome. Scored for mixed choir accompanied sparingly but effectively by winds and brass, the work is the devoutly Catholic Austrian Romantic composer's purest and most inward mass setting, and for those who revere his deeply spiritualized symphonies, the work has long been a favorite. It is also one of the composer's most difficult masses to bring off in performance; long stretches of it are unaccompanied, thereby testing a choir's intonation, and all of it is ...
Read More
A good new recording of Bruckner's Mass in E minor is always welcome. Scored for mixed choir accompanied sparingly but effectively by winds and brass, the work is the devoutly Catholic Austrian Romantic composer's purest and most inward mass setting, and for those who revere his deeply spiritualized symphonies, the work has long been a favorite. It is also one of the composer's most difficult masses to bring off in performance; long stretches of it are unaccompanied, thereby testing a choir's intonation, and all of it is technically demanding. Fortunately, the KammerChor Saarbrücken is a superbly polished group with a warmly glowing tone, a seemingly effortless technique, a sense of intonation that never wavers and a real feel for the music's austere idiom. Accompanied by the Bläser der Kammerphilharmonie Mannheim directed by Georg Grün, the KammerChor turns in a performance of Bruckner's E minor Mass, which can stand comparison with the best of earlier recordings, including its own 1991 recording with...
Read Less
