Rossini: Petite messe solennelle. Dorothee Mields, soprano; Nicole Pieper, alto; Tobias Hunger, tenor; Felix Schwandtke, bass; Tobias Koch, Érard grand piano; Christian Gerharz, harmonium; Rheinische Kantorei conducted by Edzard Burchards. CPO. $36.99 (2 CDs).
The most-extended of Rossini’s péchés de vieillesse, the “sins of old age” to which Rossini confined himself compositionally after retiring from making operas beyond William Tell (1829), the Petite messe solennelle of 1863 is small in instrumentation and its complement of vocalists, but quite large enough in feeling and sincerity to give the lie to any notion that it is less than heartfelt and serious. Rossini himself downplayed the emotive power of the work both by scoring it so modestly – at a time when religious music was performed by increasingly gigantic ensembles and assemblages – and by attaching sly comments here and there to the music: he called the 12 singers “cherubs” and questioned at the end of the autograph score whether the music was sacred or sacrilegious (a query he made through a piquant French play on words). But when performed with as much feeling and sensitivity as it is on a two-disc CPO release of a performance dating to 2016, the Petite messe solennelle is a very moving and effective work, no matter how much its composer may have seemed somewhat to undermine it.
Four soloists, a chorus of eight additional singers, two pianos and a harmonium: that is the full and, yes, petite group for which Rossini wrote this more-than-full-scale Mass. Soon after writing it using the full liturgical texts, he orchestrated the piece (primarily out of a justifiable concern that if he did not, others might do so after his death), and at that time he added the Thomas Aquinas hymn O salutaris hostia just before the concluding Agnus Dei – a bow to a tradition dating to the Renaissance, but not one familiar in Victorian times. The addition, in the form of a soprano aria, later crept back into performances that reverted more-or-less to the original instrumentation, as does the one led by Edzard Burchards.
It is a touch disappointing that Burchards and the ensemble do not quite return to Rossini’s original concept: the use of a period Érard instrument is a wonderful and highly sensitive touch, but the omission of the entire second-piano part is more than slightly concerning – even though the second piano largely doubles the chorus, and even though Tobias Koch has skillfully adapted his solo-piano material to incorporate elements from the missing additional instrument.
This is, however, one of the very few disappointments in what is generally an exemplary presentation of the Petite messe solennelle. (Another issue is a rather egregious timing error by a company that is usually very careful: the two-CD performance is listed on the back as lasting 62 minutes, although thankfully the in-booklet timings add up to the correct 87.) Throughout this rendition of the Petite messe solennelle, the tempos are well-chosen, historical performance practices are generally followed, the singers enunciate clearly and with sincerity, and the unusual sound made by blending the small vocal complement with a period piano and a harmonium (carefully and sensitively played by Christian Gerharz) comes through to very fine effect. Indeed, the modest instrumental and vocal elements of Rossini’s work, when presented as well as they are here, go some distance toward explaining why Verdi did not care for the Petite messe solennelle: after all, he was an opera composer who created a huge and highly dramatic Requiem not too many years after Rossini wrote this modestly scaled but thoroughly convincing Mass. Rossini’s work does not entirely turn its back on the composer’s operatic knowledge and sensibilities, but his subtle incorporation of opera-like instrumental transitions and harmonic wanderings is on a different level from what Verdi would bring to his tremendously operatic Requiem in 1874. The reality is that both Rossini’s work and Verdi’s are exceptionally effective, but in very different ways. And what Burchards and the other performers here get exactly right is the foundational meaningfulness that pervades the Petite messe solennelle. There is a level of rock-solid faith underlying Rossini’s lightness of vocal writing and modest instrumentation: in a very real sense, he reduces the feelings of the Mass to their basics, and in so doing expresses them fully and with deep sincerity – while adhering to such expectations as the use of a fugue; actually two, both produced with a sure hand and firm understanding of the form.
Most of Rossini’s péchés de vieillesse are short and slight, often amusing and sometimes even a bit crude. But for all his expertise in the comedic sphere – and his comment at the end of the autograph of the Petite messe solennelle that he “was born for Opera buffa” – Rossini created at least half a dozen compelling serious operas, up to and including William Tell. He most certainly knew how to communicate matters of considerable import to an audience, and that is just what he does in his unusual approach to the Mass in his Petite messe solennelle. The work is, in its way, just as grand as it is small; and it is very much to the credit of Burchards and the other participants in this performance that they neither understate the work’s seriousness nor overdo matters by trying to provide heft that the composer transparently did not want the work to have.
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