Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Emotional Rollercoaster, 9 Jul 2006
A live performance of this work may be a bit off but the excitement of the evening will carry it through anyway, so no harm done. A recording, to be played ovar and over again needs to be close to ideal otherwise it will quickly annoy. So when a piece requires a full orchestra, symphony chorus and four soloists - all working together - a recording has a lot to live up to.
Step forward Otto Klemperer. With the New Philarmonia Orchestra and Chorus, he takes Beethoven and wrings every drop of excitement and emotion from an astonishing score. The stately Kyrie is followed by a Kyrie that climbs increasingly craggy emotional heights. Just as you stagger to the top, the performance is scaling the next impossible looking peak beyond.
The Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei follow, each a jewel in their own right. As the final Agnus, Dona Nobis Pacem completes we are, indeed, given immaculate peace.
Unless you have definite notions and want a strictly period performance, there is no other recording that matches this one.
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42 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Peerless, 13 Feb 2003
Let’s not mince words. Towering, monumental, magisterial, noble - peerless. In this case there is little point in analytical dissection. This recording is a ‘gestalt’, the whole exceeding the greatness of it parts. And this is greatness. An extraordinary symbiosis between composer/conductor. A performance that gloriously achieves the desideratum of providing a genuine objective correlative to Beethoven’s superscript—‘From the heart — may it return to the heart!’ Making the only appropriate response that of the Gramophone reviewer—‘Heartfelt thanks!…’
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is what the Missa Solemnis is about, 2 Oct 2006
As Mahler and Schoenberg did before him, Klemperer, born a jew, switched in his youth to chistianity, becoming a catholic. Unlike his mentor Mahler, who made the move out of convenience, he made it out of conviction; unlike Schoenberg, who reclaimed his jewish faith out of the horror of Nazism, Klemperer remained a christian until his death in 1973, just a handful of years before his 90th birthday. This, his second recorded version of the Beethoven Missa Solemnis, is a record for the ages: indeed, if there were a single recording meriting the label "Great Recording of the Century" under which EMI reissue the better of their vast back catalogue, it would certainly be this. That we are before an unusual experience becomes apparent barely a few seconds into the Kyrie, where the power of expression beckons you to listen attentively. The two fugues that respectively close the Gloria and the Credo are designed to overwhelm you, and the Benedictus will force even the most steadfast of agnostics to stand up, make confession and take communion. And if in the 21st century the sound of martial drums and trumpets Beethoven calls for in the Agnus Dei no longer evoke in the listener the horrors of carnage and war as surely they did to Beethoven's early 19th century audience, the deep plea for peace Klemperer exacts from his wonderful choir and outstanding team of soloists will make you question the world around you like nothing else. There's a force of conviction permeating the whole performance that, in spite of Klemperer's usual no-nonsense focus and granitic exposition making no room for sentimentality (as, for example, Karajan's several recorded versions often allow for), shakes you all over. The Kingsway Hall (stereo) recording dates from 1965, and that the 80-year old conductor was able to hold such a formidable control on the vast forces before him is but astonishing; it may sometimes sound harsh and constricted but no matter: with a such a performance behind it, that is just splitting hairs.
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