I can’t think of a current recorded series that has given me more pleasure than Richard Hickox’s survey of the Haydn Masses. For my money, no other conductor on disc conveys so happily the mingled drama, symphonic power and spiritual exhilaration of these glorious works. Like Harnoncourt in his recent recording for Teldec, Hickox is fully alive to the ominous unease that permeates the great Mass in Time of War, above all in the minatory drumbeats and strident wind fanfares of the Agnus Dei. But while Harnoncourt consciously strives for maximum dramatic and rhetorical effect, sometimes to the point of mannerism, Hickox directs the Mass with a natural, unforced sense of phrase and pace. His tempos in the Kyrie and the opening of the Gloria are that much more animated than Harnoncourt’s, yet never at the expense of dignity; and at the end of the Credo the prospect of the life to come rouses Hickox and his forces to a blaze of dancing jubilation that makes Harnoncourt seem a touch earnest and earthbound by comparison.
The playing of Collegium Musicum 90, led by Simon Standage, is predictably polished and athletic, with detail sharply etched, while the 24-strong chorus sings with its accustomed fresh tone and incisive attack: the ringing confidence of the choral entries is particularly thrilling in, say, the militant canon that launches the Credo. 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 uncommon sensitivity to the meaning of the text, abetted by the eloquent solo cello of Richard Tunnicliffe. Unlike Harnoncourt, incidentally, Hickox opts for the original version of the Mass, eschewing the parts for clarinets, flute (in the ‘Qui tollis’) and horns later added by Haydn.
The fill-ups, all but one sharing the Mass’s C major, trumpet-and-drum sonorities, are imaginatively chosen. Haydn’s two Te Deum settings epitomize the immense distance he travelled during his long career, the rococo exuberance and strict species counterpoint of the little-known early work (here making its CD debut) contrasting with the grandeur, sweep 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. The first, a hymn-like E flat aria accompanied by a sextet of clarinets, horns and bassoons (shades here of the music for the three boys that opens the Act 2 finale of Die Zauberflote), uses, uniquely in Haydn’s works, the technique of melodrama, interpolating spoken lines during the instrumental interludes. Nancy Argenta sings the 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. In sum, a winner of a disc: enterprising planning, invigorating performances and first-class recorded sound, with an ideally judged balance between chorus and orchestra.'