Mozart, Great Mass in C minor, Carolyn Sampson, Bach Collegium Japan/Suzuki (Bis)Record companies would do well not to get their new releases reviewed too far ahead of their release date. This wasn't listed in the usual place when I first wanted to order it and it was only a few weeks later, looking for something to make up an order to post free status, that I remembered it. I'm glad that I did.
This mass, K.427, is dated 1782-3 when Mozart was in his mid twenties and thus an old hand at such profundity. But it is thus nearly ten years ahead of the Requiem. It emerges from shadows to clarity and, especially in Carolyn Sampson's performance is operatic in its tone and energy. It lies somewhere between Bach's B minor mass and The Marriage of Figaro.
It is some time since I bought a disc of Mozart but there's always a place for one's first love and here is all of that potent mix of the playful jester and poignant romantic. If it is still put about that Romanticism begins when Beethoven moves on from his first two symphonies, which were somehow akin to late Mozart - and such an idea has been put about by me- I might want to point to melancholy paassages here which reach beyond the 'classical'. Genius is usually not just off its time and for all time but ahead of its time, too.
The busy hosannas of the Sanctus are a rousing finale of glorious proportions after the lively Laudamus te and the portentous meditation on 'taking away all our sins'.
Masaaki Suzuki brings his characteristic 'crispness' from Bach and with the lustrous Carolyn, at the top of her brilliant best, makes something of such clarity and compelling grace that the Best Disc of the Year shortlist is extended further before it is possible to come to any decision.