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Editor's Choice

Polyphony's finest hour? In these Brucker works they certainly produce a sound that can best be described as awesome, moving our reviewer Marc Rochester to comment that "we're unlikely to hear choral singing as fine as this for a good few years to come".  The disc's quality does its choir full justice.  To coin a cliché, a Bruckner disc for the ages.

Hyperion long ago paid signal service to Bruckner's mature settings of the Mass with recordings by Matthew Best's Corydon Singers of all three.  Interestingly, their 1985 recording of the E minor Mass has just been re-issued on the budget Helios label, providing pretty powerful opposition to any new release, let alone one at full price.  But while the Corydons were the choir par excellance on Hyperion in the 1980s and 1990s, the torch has been passed to Polyphony, whose sound is, if anything, even more smoothly rounded, more fully blended and more sumptuous.  In Stephen Layton, too, they have a director who is every bit as openly communicative, and while I still feel Best reveals the soul of Bruckner's sacred utterings more intensely, Layton (who also uses the 1882 version), produces such gorgeous sound from his singers that the overall listening experience is infinitely satisfying.

There's no doubt that the latest Hyperion recording, made in Ely Cathedral, has more presence and atmosphere than that made over 20 years earlier in St Alban's Church, Holborn.  That certainly helps produce an ideal balance between wind ensemble and singers, the delicate woodwind flutterings of the Benedictus providing a delicious undercurrent to the broad, spacious choral lines.  The rare moments of climax are nicely restrained and never impinge on the overall calmness of Bruckner's setting.

Splendid as the performance of the Mass is, from my money the seven unaccompanied motets which surround it on this disc are absolute gems.  An ethereal account of Ave Maria has a breadth and grandeur which belies its short time-span; as the vocal lines crowd in on each other, the effect is nothing short of electrifying.  And popular as it is, if there is to be a "definitive" interpretation on disc of Locus iste, this has to be it.  Put simply, we're unlikely to hear choral singing as fine as this for a good few years to come.

*****
Bruckner was an outsider in the Vienna of aesthetes and coffee-house philosophers, his symphonies often denounced or simply ignored. This album finds the composer secure in his spiritual home, serving God in music transcendent. Stephen Layton's reading of the Second Mass articulates sublime, prayer-like qualities routinely overlooked or underplayed by others.  The approach, fully supported by Polyphony and the Britten Sinfonia winds and brass, is relevatory, rich in contrasts, fervent outbursts and symphonic tension.  Layton and his singers apply comparable intensity to Bruckner's short motets.  An outstanding release.

Performance *****
Sound *****

Of the 'chamber-like' versions of this Mass, Polyphony trumps all others for beauty of tone. At the end of the Agnus, where the sopranos don't have bulk, they gleam. In the Benedictus, too, musical sense arises from transparency and intelligent shaping. Herreweghe on Harmonia Mundi is excellent, too, though the sopranos need a few extra grams of weight. His trombonish texture is more engaging than Layton's, which sometimes gives the impression that the brass are wallflowers to the choral action. If Rilling's Sanctus has the epic qualities, and Herreweghe's Gloria the symphonic, it is ultimately Layton who impresses with his slick, choral control. The performances of the motets are excellent, too, painting nuanced pictures of these vocally and philosophically stratospheric pieces.

With its refracted echoes of Palestrina, Bruckner's E minor Mass for choir and wind band stands as a sublime anachronism in a worldly, sceptical age. Recorded in the sumptuous acoustics of Ely Cathedral, Polyphony and the Britten Sinfonia catch the music's starkness, exaltation and mysticism as movingly as I have heard. This is a searching performance, with soft singing of awed intensity, but also an unusually dramatic one. Stephen Layton never allows Bruckner's music, even at its most unearthly, to become becalmed; and he builds climaxes of molten intensity in, say, the Sanctus, or the fervent motet Christus factus est. A glorious disc of music that strives for, and ultimately attains, a state of transcendent peace.

An outstanding disc: music glorious but not widely known, in superlative performances and an acoustic (Ely Cathedral) made for it. As Stephen Johnson remarks in an eloquent note, Bruckner, whose symphonies "still polarise opinion", spent more of his life composing church music. What riches it contains. The E minor Mass, accompanied only by wind instruments (the Britten Sinfonia), is a work of searching beauty - Palestrina and Wagner fused in a wholly personal style - whose often stratospheric writing holds no terrors for these superb sopranos of Stephen Layton's Polyphony. Even finer are the seven motets recorded here, radiantly sung.

Bruckner lovers will be familiar with his motets, but may not know his glorious Mass No 2, which shares their daring modulations and sensual chromatic harmonies.  Stephen Layton and Polyphony really understand this music and perform here with a calm confidence that can be lacking in others recordings of Bruckner's often-perilous choral writing.  As a bonus, the spacious acoustic of Ely Cathedral adds an authentic lustre to their wonderfully rich and rewarding sound.

This recording done in the resonant acoustic of Ely Cathedral has much to recommend it. Polyphony is one of the finest ensembles of its type, now about 20 years on the scene, and Stephen Layton needs no introduction to choral aficionados. There are a number of recordings of this mass on the market, as it is unusual in that it alone of Bruckner's canonical three uses only wind instruments as accompaniment. This gives a very medieval, cool sound to the work no matter how it is performed.

One of the classic readings is that of Eugene Jochum with his Bavarian Radio forces, recorded in the early sixties and seventies. Those beautiful accounts are still available in a DGG Originals two-disc set that remains mandatory for any serious collection, though the sound is a little thin now in some spots (DGG sound is almost always thin from those days), but it does have a more red-blooded, Germanic feel to it that surely Bruckner would appreciate. I also find this same sort of sentiment on the more modern, and superbly recorded reading by Frieder Bernius, the Deutsche Blaserphilharmonie, and Kammerchor Stuttgart on Sony (1992, and great sound). But Layton offers an even cooler sound, sparse and ascetic though by no means unemotional, and perhaps closer to Bruckner's ideal than his actual experience gave him. The singing cannot be bettered, and Hyperion long ago learned how to temper those cold and nasty Middle Ages English cathedrals.

This recording comes generously coupled with seven of the composer's motets, including the first real masterpiece, the Ave Maria of 1861, and going up to the Vexilla Regis of 1892, only four years before his death. A lot of people sit happily with their recordings of the forth, seventh, and ninth symphonies, ignoring the others and blissfully unaware of the choral music. This certainly puts one on the fast track to completely misunderstanding the work of the composer as a whole, as these choral pieces and masses are essential to gain a complete picture of the man's work and its meaning.

So this is an excellent reading, not topping the two I mentioned, but easily taking its place among them.

Hyperion is on a roll. Its superb new CD of Anton Bruckner's choral music, with the chorus Polyphony under the direction of Stephen Layton, includes both a mass, the second in E minor, and seven of the composer's motets. Here there's no overt attempt to say which form of music is superior, though again the motets for unaccompanied choir do seem to win out.

Bruckner scored the E-minor Mass for chorus and wind band instead of conventional orchestra with stings, and the Britten Sinfonia joins Polyphony for a compelling reading. It climaxes in a glowing Agnus Dei whose dense chromaticism brings the music to a lofty conclusion.

I’ve had nothing but good things to say about Polyphony in works by Rutter, Whitacre, and maybe a few others. Still, I wasn’t prepared for the excellence of this program. Bruckner, of course, is grandly symphonic even when he’s not writing symphonies; and his motets and masses are no exception. Polyphony, you’ll recall, is a co-ed British chamber choir, with accents on both “British” (clarity above all; bright, white soprano tone) and “chamber” (intimate in scale all the way). How do these attributes mix with some of the most expansive writing in the sacred choral canon? The answer is, very well indeed. The musicianship is so sophisticated, so meticulous that it’s impossible not to get swept up in what the singers are doing.

The Sanctus of the Mass is spun out like 19th Century Thomas Tallis, with the English vocal style acting as a catalyst for the success of the conductor’s approach. What really captures my attention is the spectrum of vocal colors these singers create in pianissimo range. Rarely do you hear gradations of softness so fraught with expressive possibilities. Those of us who’ve warbled through our share of ‘Virga Jesses’ and ‘Os Iustis’ over the years will marvel at what these singers accomplish in these familiar motets.