Thomas Hengelbrock has quickly established a reputation on the continent as an imaginative and vital opera conductor, though on record he is known mainly as the Director of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra on several of their most notable instrumental releases. Perhaps not surprisingly for a man of Hengelbrock’s free spirit, there is something of a subtext to this new recording of Bach’s Mass: it follows a staged performance for the Schwetzingen Festival and Bonn Opera House, ‘staged’ meaning nine actors creating visual images “to intellectual concepts and ideas within the work”. As this CD was made after the television recording, one can perhaps be encouraged to put the theatricals to one side, thereby taking no notice of the front cover (red beams basking three step-ladders with man on left walking head forward into a wall). The idea is perhaps not as disorienting as it might seem given the work’s objective grandeur, no doubt partly forged by the composer’s mysterious motivation beyond performance. Hengelbrock challenges us, in his short essay alone, to view this work as something of far greater rhetorical power than any Mass text can give on its own.
Inspired by actor’s movement, cross-referencing to original cantata texts, or something unarticulated, this performance is remarkably thought-provoking in its own right. The opening Kyrie, as revealing as anything of a musician’s ability to find the natural line, is cautiously unwrapped. Mellifluous and fairly restrained for those who like the fugal sospiri to build monumentally, one soon discovers that the shape of this movement, and the second Kyrie especially, is even more patiently constructed than we thought. The singing of the Balthasar Neumann Choir is beautifully crystallized here, if less well defined in the “Et incarnatus” and “Crucifixus”. Agility prevails in the significant demands made of “Cum sancto spiritu” and “Et expecto”, thrilling though these movements are, tempos are at times bordering on the frenetic though Hengelbrock is, uncharacteristically for his generation, refreshingly relaxed in the alla breve-style movements (in this respect he is not dissimilar to Harry Christophers) and only the odd compulsion to bulge unceremoniously brings contrivance to his broadly conceived paragraphing.
Even if one had not been made aware of the visual component (and on balance I wish I hadn’t), there is a sense of musicians directed en masse to turn putty into new and unexpected shapes. In the tutti movements this makes for incandescent, interesting, if not fervent, music-making; Hengelbrock builds his edifices, such as the “Cum sancto spiritu” with a rare control of abstraction, deftly connecting the individual movements of the liturgy. Part of this emanates from the corporate nature of this project where soloists, previously unknown to me, emerge from the ranks of the ripieno choir. Almost to a fault, they radiate Hengelbrock’s microcosm of fastidious textures, technical security and pincer-like phrasing. What is strangely paradoxical is how such impressive refinement and intellectual clarity in matters of gesture and structure – designed to deepen our appreciation of Bach’s humanity – leave one strangely unmoved. Perhaps we need the visuals. This is brilliant in its own way – and the piece really can take anything thrown at it – but through this ‘new’ rhetoric, natural expressive warmth is too often subsumed by the whims of a designer’s agenda. Still, there are some stunningly good moments.'