This grotesque sounding (stereo!!!) performance, recorded in the impossibly reverberant acoustic of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, need not detain us long. There is no orchestra. Violins cover the trumpets and winds when the chorus isn’t singing, and the chorus blots out everything else when it is. Of Bach’s dancing polyphony there’s nary a trace. The chorus itself sings with imprecise rhythm (check out those wandering triplets in the Sanctus), seldom venturing below a healthy mezzo forte. The soloists are all at their very worst: Jenny Hill and Peter Pears come across as tremulous and weak, Janet Baker emotionally disengaged and clearly uncomfortable, and John Shirley-Quirk wobbly beyond endurance in a “Quoniam” where the horn cracks its opening solo and the continuo sounds like percolating mud. The fog of reverberation around the voices, both choral and solo, actually makes it difficult to hear individual notes and plays havoc with their sense of pitch. Giulini’s soft-spoken, ostentatiously reverent approach will not be to all tastes, but it’s much better realized (albeit at slightly slower tempos even than these) on Sony with first-rate Bavarian Radio forces and fine soloists. That this monument to an unhappy occasion, compounded by total engineering incompetence, could ever have been even considered for release, let alone approved, simply defies belief. Yecch!
