I have a confession: Mendelssohn’s vocal music to me is like a limp salad or soggy cereal. The promise was there, but it just sat around too long and no matter how you try to dress it up it’s still disappointing and gloppy. That said, this disc is an impressive achievement because it takes these more or less predictable indulgences and turns them into very appetizing morsels (okay, enough of the food references). While I find much of Mendelssohn tiresome and overwrought (like a hammy actor or Andrew Lloyd Webber–albeit a far more artful and talented version), he does have some redeeming qualities–and he’s at his best, chorally speaking, when he sounds like Brahms. Granted, Mendelssohn came first but Brahms just does it better–much better. One example is the Motet Op. 69 No. 1, a well-constructed piece that doesn’t overreach but stays comfortably within the bounds of its text and musical ideas. And it’s really quite lovely. The problems come when Mendelssohn tries to take an idea much farther than it should be stretched, in a seeming effort to make it far weightier and more important than it deserves–as in the endless, hyper-dramatic Choralmotet Op. 23 No. 3. Again, however, Creed and his singers make real music out of this, neither backing away from some of the more overly emphatic moments nor ploughing the textural surface too deeply. They give a concentrated effort to meld disjointed sections and clarify mushy part writing. If you’re a Mendelssohn fan, a 1989 Harmonia Mundi recording with Philippe Herreweghe, La Chapelle Royale, and the Collegium Vocale offers many of these same works in excellent performances and much better sound. This current production is unusually noisy, including an occasional bump against a microphone and a recurring low-frequency noise, as if someone with a deep bass voice were trying to sing along (or a heavy truck were passing by). The background is a little too resonant and the louder passages suffer from this. There’s nothing wrong with the performances, however, and anyone who truly does love this music–and I know you’re in the majority–will ignore the nasty composer comments and just enjoy the program.
