Hector Berlioz - Messe solennelle (Hervé Niquet)

Information

Composer: Hector Berlioz

• Messe solennelle, H20

Adriana Gonzalez, soprano
Julien Behr, tenor
Andreas Wolf, bass

Le Concert Spirituel
Hervé Niquet, conductor

Date: 2019
Label: Alpha
https://outhere-music.com/en/albums/messe-solennelle-alpha564

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Review

It’s nearly 30 years now since John Warrack, in these pages, hailed the sudden rediscovery of a copy of this Mass (in Antwerp) as ‘the most exciting musical discovery of modern times’. He was also greeting the work’s first recording under John Eliot Gardiner, the first – as it has turned out to date – of three. In a passionate booklet note Hervé Niquet sounds scarcely able to contain his impatience before being able to record this new performance, also captured live.

Le Concert Spirituel’s version is both quicker and smoother than Gardiner’s. While not avoiding any of the daring harmonic clashes that must have pinned back ears in the 1820s, it enjoys them rather less than Gardiner. The effect is more intimate and chapel-like. The choir are courageous, especially the sopranos. Berlioz may have been totally untrained musically – as Niquet loved to point out in his promotional puffs for the work – but he surely had Beethoven’s later choral work in his ears while writing. These singers are worked hard.

The effect is to emphasise even more what a daring work this was for its time. What we now hear as radical use of blocks of sound and mood – try the ‘Resurrexit’ (only one version here, unlike Gardiner), which gets almost operetta-like in its celebration of Christ’s return to life – may actually have embarrassed Berlioz into feeling he didn’t know enough yet and encouraged the work’s premature withdrawal. This young composer, given a slot to occupy, certainly had a go at displaying all his craft at once …

The recording is more than clear enough in sound and balance to do justice to the performance, although a strange mangling of Latin pronunciation comes over tenor and choir in the final movements, both the words ‘Agnus’ and ‘Sanctus’ proving problematic. Overall it’s a stirring occasion and Niquet’s passion is clearly realised – but as a straight choice I’d still take the Gardiner for its characteristically manic energy and enjoyment of orchestral detail.

-- Mike Ashman, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2020/Feb/Berlioz_messe_564.htm
https://artmusiclounge.wordpress.com/2019/11/20/niquets-powerful-moving-messe-solennelle/
https://www.amazon.com/Berlioz-Messe-Solennelle-Adriana-Gonzalez/dp/B07XW8DX6M

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Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic composer, best known for his Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts. Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works, and conducted concerts with more than one thousand musicians. Although neglected in France for much of the 19th century, Berlioz's music was extremely influential in the development of the symphonic form, instrumentation, and the depiction in music of programmatic and literary ideas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Berlioz

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Hervé Niquet (born 28 October 1957) is a French conductor, harpsichordist, tenor, and the director of Le Concert Spirituel, specializing in French Baroque music. He studied harpsichord, composition, conducting, and opera singing. In 1980, he was appointed as the choir master of the Opéra National de Paris. Between 1985 and 1986, Niquet became a member of William Christie's Les Arts florissants as a tenor. In 1987, he established his own ensemble named Le Concert Spirituel which focuses on French grand motets of the 17th and 18th centuries. Niquet has recorded for such labels as Accord, Naxos and Glossa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herv%C3%A9_Niquet

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