Liszt: Missa Solemnis "Graner Messe"(1997):Jacques Grimbert(cond)/Paris-Sorbonne Orchestra & Choir/etc

The enormous wallop that the piano output of Franz Liszt packs, and the limited amount of time you have in life to get to know Liszt's staggering output in general, tends to make us forget that he also composed sacred choral music that can stand with anything produced in the genre in the nineteenth century. On Franz Liszt: Missa Solemnis "Graner Mass," Arte Nova makes available to us, at a budget price, the largest of Liszt five mass settings. Liszt's Missa Solemnis is scored for four soloists, double chorus, orchestra, and organ, transmitting the six standard movements of the mass in a little over an hour. The "Graner Mass" is so called as it was written for the confirmation ceremony on August 31, 1856, of the then still not completed Basilica of Ezstergom, home to the Hungarian Archbishop in the Diocese of Gran. More than half of all Hungarians are Roman Catholic, so the confirmation of the Basilica was a very big deal, and Liszt wrote music that suited it. Franz Liszt: Missa Solemnis "Graner Mass" is only the second recording made of this huge work. Although he took Ludwig van Beethoven's equally gigantic Missa Solemnis as his formal point of departure, the "Graner Mass" is sort of like what Richard Wagner might have written had he taken on a large sacred choral work, something that Wagner most certainly did not do, saving his energy for his operas instead. Wagnerians will very much like the "Graner Mass." There is an important difference in that Liszt scores more thinly than Wagner, preferring to let a few instruments speak for the many, although a large orchestra is employed. At times, this almost has a three-dimensional quality when it interacts with the solo voices. Arte Nova's recording is a little quiet and dry, although recorded in the cavernous auditorium of the Conservatoire de Liege in Belgium. Conductor Jacques Grimbert does a good job of holding this big thing together, although even he is not able to cure what seems to be ailing tenor Guy Fletcher, whose sense of pitch is a tad wide of the mark. Otherwise, this is a fine, representative performance of a rare and important work, and is well worth the risk in obtaining it.