Haydn, (M.): Requiem & Mass

Recording of the Month MusicWeb April 2005

Editor's Choice Gramophone Magazine June 2005

Gramophone Magazine Award Finalist 2005 - Choral

MUSICWEB RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR (2005)

Best Choral Category Award (BBC Music Magazine 2005)

"King and his forces give the Mass a satisfyingly spirited performance, but these discs are memorable for their fine recording of Michael Haydn's astonishing Requiem. This must be one of my records of the year and I do urge you to buy it."
- MusicWeb April 2005

"Michael Haydn (1737-1806) was the younger brother of Joseph, and it takes just a few notes on this splendid double-CD set to reveal that he was a composer of substance. Robert King's accompanying essay brings him vividly to life, but the music is a real ear-opener. These two Mass settings (one a Requiem, the other for a Benedictine Abbey) are full of imaginative detail and inventive ideas. Quite a discovery!"
(Gramophone)

'A good version of the Requiem appeared last year - but this new one has the edge, in the sharpness of the orchestral contribution (the crucial brass register more pungently), the clarity and attack of the choir, and in the quality of the solo quartet, led by the vernal soprano of Carolyn Sampson. In both works Robert King chooses convincing tempos, keeps the rhythms vital and, in the Mass, never tries to drive Haydn's amiable, graceful music too hard. If you love Mozart's and Joseph Haydn's church music, you can hardly fail to enjoy this'
- BBC Music Magazine

'King's performances are as attractive as the music, with fine solos from Carolyn Sampson and Hilary Summers'
- Sunday Times

The King's Consort's latest foray into the studio brings us a thrilling new recording of Michael Haydn's Requiem, and reveals the little-known 'St Ursula' Mass to be a truly exceptional work.

The Requiem was composed in response to tragedy, the death of Haydn's patron - the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg - providing the official cloak for an outpouring of grief as much inspired by the death of the composer's infant daughter. In itself the work is a memorable and confident example of the genre, but its deserved fame has been somewhat eclipsed by the many striking similarities between the Haydn and Mozart Requiems; when Wolfgang Amadeus composed what was to be his last - and most famous - work a full twenty years after Haydn's memorial to the archbishop had been first performed, he doubtless intended it as the highest of praise to his friend that he borrowed melodies, rhythms, scoring, structure … Such points of musicological interest must no longer be allowed to obscure the worth of the Haydn's original magnum opus.

Some three dozen Mass-settings by Michael Haydn survive. The Missa in honorem Sanctae Ursula (also known as the 'Chiemsee-Messe') currently rests in relative obscurity, being performed rarely and hardly touched in the recording studio. And yet Robert King, his choir, soloists and orchestra here demonstrate this to be a work of great beauty and intense power, with a place both in the liturgy and as a showcase for excellent performances.