The last of the great choral works to be heard at this year’s Proms was Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, given by more or less the same forces that performed it during the 2014 season. John Eliot Gardiner conducted his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and Monteverdi Choir. Lucy Crowe was once again the soprano soloist, and only her fellows – mezzo Ann Hallenberg, tenor Giovanni Sala and bass William Thomas – were effectively new to the proceedings.
Gardiner’s interpretation – confrontational, vivid, fierce in its articulation and drama – has long been regarded as a thrilling, if radical alternative to the slow-moving, more reflective approach favoured by some performers, but here there was even greater intensity and immediacy than I remember in 2014. Hearing the work during a time of war in Europe sharpens the impact of its demands for peace and its evocation of militarism as emblematic of man’s rejection of God’s love and grandeur. Gardiner’s extremes of speed and dynamics seemed heightened on this occasion, invested with even greater urgency.
