Having recorded all the symphonies with the period instruments of Le Concert des Nations, Jordi Savall concludes his Beethoven project with the final choral masterpiece. For Savall, the Missa Solemnis is “one of the most inestimable treasures of the human mind” and in performing it his aim was to “rediscover what is essential by going back to the autograph sources”. As well as a period orchestra he uses a chorus of just 36 voices, which may rob the great surging climaxes of some of their sonic grandeur, but does allow the more contrapuntal passages to move with easy athleticism.
