Gramophone Early Music Award 2024: Obrecht's Missa Maria zart

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Obrecht’s monumental Missa Maria zart: a fresh, new and vital performance based on a unique ‘new’ source

Rather like the Piano category, the Early Music one often presents the panel with a near-impossible task owing to a high general level of excellence confined within a relatively narrow sound world, in this case that of vocal polyphony. How to choose? Well, thankfully, here is a recording that not only is strong in quality, but also aims to create a specific and distinctive atmosphere.

Netherlands-based ensemble Cappella Pratensis have for some years performed Renaissance music from facsimiles of original manuscript sources, even if it means squeezing in together round a large score on a lectern. Here they apply a similar method (this time involving re-creation of a source) to Flemish master Jacob Obrecht’s monumental Missa Maria zart, and the results – freed from the imperatives of concert projection – are inward and focused, yet at the same time warm and intimate.

Comparisons have been made with experiencing late Beethoven, and this recording shows you why

The piece itself is special too: at around an hour, it’s the longest Renaissance Mass, constructed with astounding ingenuity and resource on the framework of a simple song-tune cantus firmus. If that sounds like it might be a hard listen, Obrecht’s superb control of the music’s outward and inner architecture mesmerises with a deep-lying strength and ambition so compelling that afterwards the helpless listener can struggle to explain what has just happened. Comparisons have been made with experiencing late Beethoven, and this recording shows you why. Cappella Pratensis support the grand ebb and flow of this miraculous piece with a sure grasp – they embrace its world view, relish its expressive details and serve it up fresh, new and vital: an extraordinary achievement. Lindsay Kemp