July 20, 2020

Mozart Mass in C Minor is The Sunday Times’ Recording of the Week

“Minkowski conducts a grand, big-boned account, and his two soprano soloists, Ana Maria Labin and Ambroisine Bré, are ideally contrasted with the tenor Stanislas de Barbeyrac and bass Norman Patzke, who make telling contributions.”

“Mozart Mass in C Minor,” performed by Les Musiciens du Louvre, Ana Maria Labin, Ambroisine Bré , Stanislas de Barbeyrac, Norman Patzke, and led by Marc Minkowski, is The Sunday Times’ Recording of The Week! Read the full review below!

“It’s an irony of music history that Mozart finished neither of his greatest choral works, this mass and the D minor Requiem. Minkowski conducts the completion published by Helmut Eder for the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe in 1985, which fills in the missing orchestration of the first section of the Credo, the sublime soprano aria Et incarnatus estwith its “operatic” solos for flute, oboe and bassoon, the Sanctus, Benedictus and Hosanna. Although using period instruments and a tiny choir of 11 ripieno singers — who excel in the Handelian exigencies of the Qui tollis and Cum Sancto Spiritu — Minkowski conducts a grand, big-boned account, and his two soprano soloists, Ana Maria Labin in Et incarnatus and Ambroisine Bré in Laudamus te, are ideally contrasted with the tenor Stanislas de Barbeyrac and bass Norman Patzke, who make telling contributions to Quoniam and Benedictus.”

Hugh Canning

Read the full review on The Sunday Times