Classic Library:Beethoven:Missa Solemnis Op.123/Choral Fantasie Op.80:Colin Davis(cond)/Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra & Chorus/etc

フィリップス時代から合唱つきの声楽曲・宗教曲を得意としていた巨匠コリン・デイヴィス。バイエルン放送響首席指揮者時代にも、ヴェルディ、モーツァルト、ブラームスの3大レクイエムの名演を残しているが、この「ミサ・ソレムニス」（フィリップスのロンドン響盤に続く2度目の録音）もそれらに劣らぬ出来栄え。イントネーションの整った美しいハーモニーを聴かせるバイエルン放送合唱団を従え、遅めのテンポでスケール雄大に描きあげている。カップリングの「合唱幻想曲」では、ドイツ音楽では並ぶもののいない名手オピッツが見事なソロを聴かせてくれる。

If someone hold told you in 1965 that Colin Davis, the vigorous and vital young English conductor who championed Mozart with the same verve and vivacity as he did Stravinsky, would one day become the venerable music director of the voluptuous Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra with a contract from RCA to record the most grand and glorious works in the choral orchestral repertoire, would you have believed it possible? Whether its possible or not is beside the point: the reality of the situation is this 1992 RCA recording of Beethovens Missa Solemnis with the Bavarian big band plus singers. And the reality of the situation is that for the most part, it is so grand and so glorious that it collapses under its own portentous pretensions. As they were for Davis Bavarian recordings of Ein Deutsches Requiem and the Requiems of Mozart and Verdi, this performance is of the bigger, the better school of interpretation. Everything is etched in stone in letters ten feet high and with just as much strength and agility. To say that Davis performance is ponderous would be to understate the case. His textures are consistently thick. His tempos are consistently turgid. His interpretation is consistently torpid. And the combined effect is unremittingly tedious. There are moments and passages of vim and vigor, but for the most part, Davis is asleep in the pew. RCAs digital sound is stunning which, in a performance as soporific as Davis, is not necessarily a good idea.