Though this is not a period performance – as one might have expected from Sir Roger Norrington – his allegiances are immediately apparent at the very start of the Kyrie: the strings in the introduction play with little or no vibrato, producing a very different sound from what we would normally expect from the South West German RSO.
There are other important points of influence both in the playing-technique and in the speeds chosen which equally reflect period performance. Interestingly, though the introduction to the Benedictus has the strings again playing with minimal vibrato, the great violin solo following is traditionally lush, with full vibrato. What this version demonstrates above all is not a doctrinaire view but a concern for bringing out the thrilling originality of Beethoven’s inspiration in a late work which over the troubled years of composition cost him so much.
So at the end of the Gloria I have rarely known a performance which, with quite so much excitement, reveals one point of daring after another, when wild syncopations and head-reeling modulations emerge in urgent accelerando. Though this radio recording, made in Stuttgart by the South West German Radio engineers, was not a live performance, the thrill of it suggests it was nevertheless recorded in a straight take, albeit with some editing afterwards.
The chorus sing throughout with a winning fervour. Their total confidence in tackling Beethoven’s impossible demands, whether in soprano entries on top B flat or exposed entries for the tenors alone, brings incandescent results. There is a similar feeling in Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s studio recording for Archiv, but there the Monteverdi Choir is a smaller body. Here the North German Radio Choir from Hamburg is supplemented by the smaller vocal ensemble from Stuttgart.
The soloists are excellent too, fresh and cleanly focused, even if the tenor, John Aler, sounds a little strained under pressure. Alastair Miles repeats his fine reading of the bass part, as already heard in the Gardiner version, while Amanda Halgrimson and Cornelia Kallisch both sing with gloriously firm, full tone, clearly focused even though the soloists are naturally balanced, not spotlit. The recording helps, too, in bringing out the highly dramatic contrasts of dynamic that regularly mark this score, again emphasising the originality of inspiration. After all, this masterpiece directly reflect Beethoven’s own rethinking of the liturgy, phrase by phrase, and in a performance like this one can almost hear him speaking the words.
There is much to be said for the Herreweghe version on Harmonia Mundi, which similarly has a period-oriented conductor working with modern forces, but the recording here has better definition and the antiphonal effects are well caught. The Gramophone Award-winning Gardiner version, however, with its even clearer detail, still stands as a first choice for a period performance. But this – mid-price – Norrington offers a performance which not only strikes an excellent balance between period and modern practice, but also brings electricity of a higher voltage than in most of this conductor’s studio recordings, fine as they are.'