Haydn: Missa Brevis - Harmoniemesse

Exceptionally elegant performances from a first rate band of musicians. Although it is for his instrumental music, primarily symphonies, string quartets and works for solo piano that Josef Haydn is most known, he was quite given to writing for voices and left behind a sizeable output of operas, twelve authenticated masses and numerous other settings of sacred texts for choir, soloists and orchestra. This program gives us his first and last words in the mass genre, one by an exuberant boy of seventeen the other by a tired and weary old man, although one could never discern the composer’s fatigue by listening to the music. The Missa Brevis in F is a little gem of economy, with Haydn sailing through the wordy Credo in under three minutes, a feat he accomplished by stacking phrases of the text on top of one another and distributing them throughout the voice parts. The unusual scoring for only two solo voices, both sopranos might have been a vehicle for he and his brother Michael, tho