There’s a big difference between authenticity with respect to circumstance and being true to the work in question. This release offers a case in point. It may be that 10 singers and single players per part (more or less) is what Bach had at his disposal, but this can scarcely do the music justice. The two great Kyrie fugues, the Sanctus/Osanna, and the conclusions of the Gloria and Credo sound pathetic. Even worse, conductor Marc Minkowski has singers (the tenors particularly) who do not blend, who never constitute a believable “chorus” (try the opening of the Credo for a particularly atrocious example), and whose pronunciation of the text isn’t even consistent (try the sopranos in the Christe eleison). Add scrappy strings and an acoustic whose excessive resonance only makes the forces sound even smaller, and the result is one of the worst modern performances of the B minor Mass, plain and simple. Yecch! [6/3/2009]
