This spaciously conceived work, by an unidentified hand, but variously attributed to Orazio Benevoli, Andreas Hofer and Biber, was first released on LP 16 years ago. Its scoring is impressive: two four-part choirs, and 35 parts for a richly varied instrumental ensemble of recorders, oboes, strings, cornetts, sackbuts, timpani, two organs and continuo. The Missa salisburgensis and the accompanying hymn Plaudite tympana were, appropriately, found in Salzburg during the 1870s and now belong to the Carolino Augusteum Museum there.
As an exercise in the skilful deployment of voices and instruments within a given space this recording makes interesting listening. As music, purely and simply, it is perhaps only intermittently as engaging. To have been present at a performance of the Mass might have been a very different matter and I suspect that I should have been thrilled by the kaleidoscopic colours and the affecting contrasts. Listening to the work in the confines of my study, ever aware of neighbourly responsibilities, inevitably diminishes the impact which the composer intended and the occasion demanded.
The recording was made in the Salzburg Kollegienkirche which has a very reverberant acoustic. By and large the project has been effectively realized both by the producer and a team of musicians drawn mainly from Austria, Germany, Britain and Spain. Among the many interesting features of the performance is the divergence in sound between the Tolz Boys' Choir and boys of the Escolania de Montserrat. Both bring an appealing freshness of tone to the upper strands of this 54-stave score. The men's voices are effective, too and for the most part the playing of the Collegium Aureum offers strong support; only in places did I encounter weak ensemble, slovenly phrasing and unsteady projection in the wind parts; upper strings are weak in the Agnus Dei and in the Hymn where there is also an uncomfortable discrepancy in pitch between strings and brass. In the large choruses, which play a dominant part in the work, I was sometimes conscious of too great a diffusion of sound. Though doubtless of no consequence had one been at the occasion for which it was composed, the ear cannot but be more aware of it on disc.
Well worth exploring as an adventure in sound but do not expect too much of the music.'