The Tate recording is sharper than the Rilling in attention to detail and in clarity of recorded sound: for most listeners it will be the preferable version. Even so, and especially as this is probably the anticipated verdict, Rilling deserves and repays a sympathetic hearing.
The principal differences are apparent from the start. Tate adopts a quicker tempo and the EMI production team secure a brighter definition. The effect is immediately more bracing than Rilling's broader beat in conjunction with his expansive hall-acoustic. When the soloists enter they help to confirm the initial impression that Rilling is like a page in the atlas compared with Tate's relief-map. The soloists are well forward with Tate, so that the sense of perspective is enhanced; with Rilling we listen not so much as to a recording, with the various groups picked out, as from a good but not especially privileged seat in the main body of the hall where everything is part of a single mass of sound. So far none of these points may necessarily confer an overall superiority upon either version: it is a question of taste, and to my taste none of this matters greatly compared with the feeling for the music, of which Rilling up to this point shows plenty. Another comparison comes into play with the ''Christe''. Though the two conductors take roughly the same speed, Rilling makes a greater contrast because his speed was slower for the Kyrie. Even then there is not necessarily a right or a wrong, but where Tate's handling is demonstrably finer is in his care for the shape of the movement, for its increasing and relaxing tensions, for its rise and fall. Rilling lets it simply go ahead more or less free-wheeling and many features pass unnoticed.
The Gloria tests choirs and soloists more strenuously, and in some respects the preference inclines to Rilling here. The Tallis Choir, with Tate, is a very expert body of singers, giving strong, concentrated tone with a minimum of vibrato. The Stuttgart Choir sounds larger in numbers, also with voices of fine quality, and rather better provided with tenors. In some of their exposed leads the Tallis tenors sound a little flushed, a little in need of reinforcements: compare for instance the two recordings in the ''Quoniam'' and the Credo's ''Et resurrexit''. The soloists are less than ideal in both versions. As recorded, Rilling's quartet sounds better balanced and more homogeneous, though the women have a slightly tremulous edge. Tate's are distinctly individual voices, not always matching well: Blochwitz's pallid tone, for instance, is an odd partner for the sturdy, rich bass of Hans Tschammer. Yet by the end of this movement there can be little doubt about the greater intensity of the performance under Tate. It is particularly so as the long pedal note supports the build-up towards the ''Amen'' sections, and when they begin it is as though the fire descends from heaven. In any great performance of the Missa solemnis there has to be at some point a sense of possession, and at this moment something Dionysiac: and so it is here, but not (or at any rate not as a contagious presence) in the Rilling.
With the Credo it is good to find the ''Et incarnatus est'' choral and clear—conductors have sometimes seemed to make it a point of honour to hush it into inaudibility. An occasional looseness of attack and intonation in Rilling contrasts with Tate's precision, and Tate is also better at the anticipatory stabs of the ''Crucifixus'' and the dancing rhythm of the second ''Et vitam venturi''. In the Sanctus Tate uses soloists for the ''Pleni sunt caeli'' and ''Osanna'', whereas Rilling, going very fast, has the more usual choral blur. Both keep the violin solo of the Benedictus in natural balance. Tate (with appoggiaturas for the soloists in their urgent cry) makes a stronger tension of contrasting elements in the Agnus Dei; Rilling, fine in other ways, misses the drama here.
Against earlier recordings listed above, Tate stands quite high. Very briefly the situation is that Klemperer on EMI has the best choir (and the best recording of the choir), Karajan on DG the best soloists; Kvam on Nimbus, recording with forces ''as near to Beethoven's as possible'' is on his own, and very good, Shaw on Telarc/Conifer mild and uninteresting in the view of several critics, in my view begins to give something better than a merely good performance about half way through. Of the Tate, having found so much to praise, I retain a slightly uncertain 'after-view': something to do with the brightness (a little hard) of the sound, the not entirely natural perspectives and the odd mix of soloists. The Rilling is by no means as 'good'; and yet I have an uneasy premonition that in the long term I might more happily live with it.'