I attended my third concert at the Musikverein on Sunday night. Nikolaus Harnoncourt directed the Concertus Musicus of Vienna with the Arnold Schoenberg Choir and five wonderful soloists in a stunning performance of J.S. Bach's B-minor Mass, BWV 232. I had never before heard the mass live, and I wasn't even very familiar with most of it before this concert. The B-minor Mass had always held this place of weighty importance in my musical associations, and now I understand why.
It was beautiful. I was captured in the music and carried through the liturgy of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei. The texts take the believer on a journey through asking for mercy, praising God, stating the Christian beliefs, and then once again giving praise and asking for mercy and peace.
Concertus Musicus uses period instruments and I loved the sound. The beautiful baroque flute just floated, especially during the tenor's aria in the Sanctus where the two have an interweaving duet. All five of the soloists were great, but I found the alto, Bernarda Fink, to be the most compelling. She had this rich, round sound, and she sang with humble authority. With the nature of the text, the performance is so not about the performer, for me. The performer is the vessel through which the music is joined with the sacred text and I feel like you have to leave your ego out of it. Fink was so not ego, she was all about the meaning of the text, which is all about the glory of God. She sang the final solo of the entire piece during the Agnus Dei, and I was left breathless.
It was an inspiring concert, and it took me a week to write about it because I have just been thinking and thinking and thinking about it.
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