Haydn: Mass, Hob. XXII: 9 in C major 'Paukenmesse' (Missa in Tempore Belli - Mass in Time of War 'Kettledrum Mass')

“This rounds off Gardiner's excellent series of the six late Masses, all supreme masterpieces, which Haydn wrote for the nameday each year of the Princess Esterhazy. There's also room for a valuable extra in the motet Insanae et vanaecurae. Haydn salvaged it from his Italian oratorio Il ritorno di Tobia, after he had pruned it, saying that it was 'too good to waste'. With a Latin text replacing the original Italian, it inspires Gardiner and his brilliant team to a searing performance, very different from those you'd get from a cathedral choir.
The Masses also find Gardiner on incisive form. The contrast with Hickox's Chandos cycle is most striking in the Gloria of the Heiligmesse.
Where Hickox makes the music swagger happily, Gardiner directs a biting, crisp reading, with spotlit drums and trumpets and marginally less spring in the rhythm. Contrasts elsewhere are similar, if less marked; Hickox is warmer and more joyful where Gardiner, with some extreme speeds is consistently crisp and fresh.
Both Masses were written in 1796 and the Heiligmesse first performed on the Princess's nameday that year. The Paukenmesse was held over until 1797, though it had been heard in Vienna the previous December. Not only are both Masses smaller in scale than the succeeding four, the Paukenmesse at least is more lyrical, less grandly symphonic that those masterpieces.
Haydn is still intent on springing surprises; he characteristically ends each with vigorous, even military settings of the 'Dona nobis pacem' which foreshadow Beethoven' illustration of war in the Missa solemnis.
The recording is clear and well balanced, highlighting the pinpoint ensemble of Gardiner's choir and his excellent team of soloists.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Few other conductors on disc convey so happily the drama, symphonic power and spiritual exhilaration of these glorious works than Richard Hickox. He's fully alive to the ominous unease that permeates the great Mass in Time ofWar, but while others strive for maximum dramatic and rhetorical effect, he directs the Mass with a natural, unforced sense of phrase and pace. The playing of Collegium Musicum 90, led by Simon Standage, is polished and athletic, with detail sharply etched, while the chorus sings with fresh tone and incisive attack. The four soloists are well matched in the anxious C minor Benedictus; elsewhere Nancy Argenta brings a pure, slender tone, and a graceful sense of phrase to the Kyrie, while in the 'Qui tollis' Stephen Varcoe deploys his mellow baritone with real sensitivity.
The fill-ups are imaginatively chosen. The two Te Deum settings epitomise the immense distance Haydn travelled during his career, the rococo exuberance and strict species counterpoint of the little-known early work contrasting with the grandeur and massive, rough-hewn energy of the 1799 setting.
The two numbers of incidental music Haydn completed for the play King Alfred in 1796, shortly before embarking on the Mass, are a real collectors' item. Argenta sings the first hymnlike E flat aria with chaste elegance, while choir and orchestra palpably enjoy themselves in the following number, a rollicking, brassy celebration of the Danes' victory over the Anglo- Saxons. Invigorating performances and firstclass recorded sound, with an ideally judged balance between chorus and orchestra.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“He seizes zestfully on the overt picture of an advancing army, and rises to the optimism of an imassioned "Dona nobis pacem". ” Gramophone Magazine, June 2008