1st September 2016
Royal Albert Hall, London, United Kingdom
BACH Mass in B minor
Katherine Watson (soprano)
Tim Mead (counter-tenor)
Reinoud Van Mechelen (tenor)
André Morsch (baritone)
Les Arts Florissants
William Christie (conductor)
There would be no better piece to round off a season of uninspiring Proms than Bach's monumental "Mass in B minor", right? On the basis that I had never seen it live and I had never seen any period instrument performances live, I thought I would put the effort in to stand for two hours non-stop to see William Christie conducting Les Arts Florissants, an ensemble best known for their expertise in French Baroque operas. Error. A rather laboured and flat "Kyrie" did not start the journey well. I can happily ignore the occasional wrong notes, awkward entries and the performers being jarringly out-of-tune if there was sufficient musical merits, but the "Gloria" on the whole was a complete mess where one could not hear any structural details or Bach's polyphonic mastery. The choir had almost no shaping in the singing and the male voices were particularly under par - a Cambridge choir in exam term can easily be more satisfying. The counter-tenor, who sang with no vibrato, was particularly painful to hear. It was during the suddenly energetic drama in the E minor section of the "Credo" that I worked out what the problem was - this group is so specialised in frivolous dramatic work that they just translate their usual approach to Bach. They breezed through the work from there and it was not apparent that they had sufficient religious, or at least spiritual, conviction to appreciate the seriousness of a Mass setting, and it totally undermined the transcendental qualities of this masterpiece. If you listen to the ensemble part, they were actually very blatant with accentuating the external dance rhythms, which is what these HIP people normally do in instrumental baroque performances. It seemed to work in "Agnus Dei", but not anywhere else. A rather exhausting end to my Proms season.
