Mozart: Mass in C major, K317 'Coronation Mass' (Krönungsmesse)

Following the success of the Mozart Mass in C minor and Requiem releases, CORO is delighted to announce its third recording with Harry Christophers and the Handel and Haydn Society. Soloists Teresa Wakim, Paula Murrihy, Thomas Cooley, Sumner Thompson joined Harry and the Society to record Mozart’s Coronation Mass live at Boston’s Symphony Hall earlier this year.

Mozart’s Mass in C major is one of his most popular and enduring works. Know as the ‘Coronation Mass’ – a nickname it acquired following a performance conducted by Antonio Salieri in 1791 in Prague at the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia – it includes the beautifully tender Agnus Dei. Alongside the Mass on this CD are Mozart’s soprano solo Exsultate, jubilate, beautifully performed by Teresa Wakim, and Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 85, which was a favourite of Marie Antoinette, leading to the name ‘La Reine’, by which it is still known today.

Harry Christophers was appointed Artistic Director of Boston’s internationally acclaimed Handel and Haydn Society in 2008. Founded in 1815, the Society is considered the oldest continuously performing arts organization in the U.S. and has given the American premieres of major works by Handel, Bach and Haydn, has won a Grammy Award, and will celebrate its Bicentennial in 2015.

On this disc, the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge performs alongside four soloists and the period instrument ensemble St John’s Sinfonia. The tenor Sam Furness and bass George Humphreys both started their careers as Choral Scholars with this very choir. The mezzo-soprano Frances Bourne is in great demand on the concert platform and has sung with many of Europe’s leading conductors; the soprano Susan Gritton has amassed a vast discography that has earned her two Grammy nominations and includes, for Chandos, recordings of works by Haydn, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Vaughan Williams.

Mozart wrote the ‘Coronation’ Mass just two weeks into his appointment as Court Organist for the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. As it was first performed as part of the Easter liturgy of Salzburg Cathedral, perhaps ‘Paschal’ Mass would have been a more suitable title. However, the work achieved great renown after its performance at the Imperial Coronation in Prague, which took place nine months after Mozart’s death, and the name stuck. The opulence of the Gloria, in particular, is unmistakable, and the alternations between soloists and choir add drama to the text, which Mozart scored with operatic clarity. Here the choir forcefully praises and glorifies, while the soloists more intimately bless and worship.

Also on this disc is Susan Gritton’s first-ever recorded performance of Mozart’s dramatic solo cantata Exsultate jubilate, and a motet for the Feast of Corpus Christi, Ave verum corpus. Mozart’s Church Sonatas, which number seventeen in all, span a period of ten years; because of their beauty and simplicity they achieved a much wider use, beyond the church and into the concert hall.

The Missa brevis, KV 192 highlights Mozart’s ability to write music for the church that was not significantly different in style to the music of the court or the opera house. This mass is known as the ‘Little Credo Mass’ because of the repeated interjections of the short ‘Credo’ theme throughout – a five-note motif which Mozart many years later would use as the main theme of the last movement of his final symphony.

Imposing recordings of the Mass and the Vespers (which includes the famous 'Laudate dominum') plus Erna Spoorenberg radiant in the Exsultate, jubilate.

Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum and Charivari Agréable come together for the first time in vividly communicative interpretations of three of Mozart’s sacred masterpieces. The forces are very much as Mozart intended: a period orchestra, an all-male chorus and soloists (including 2009 BBC Chorister of the Year Laurence Kilsby) drawn from the choir.

Under Benjamin Nicholas’s spirited direction these performances bristle with energy and the invigorating freshness of youth.

The Coronation Mass is, along with the Requiem, Mozart’s most often played sacred work. Its nickname, which was not given by Mozart, had its roots in the coronation of Emperor Leopold II in Frankfurt in 1790, and was provided by none other than Salieri! This work attains the loftiest perfection in the smallest possible space, combining simple expression with a complex modulatory technique. The purity of the work is comparable to certain parts of the Requiem.