“Sound cathedrals” – an exquisite word for an exquisite concert by the Bavarian Radio Choir. A beautiful picture of an art of vocal polyphony that created its own classic style long before the “Vienna Classic” in the 16th century and reached its peak with Orlando di Lasso and Pierluigi da Palestrina. That’s why the BR choir began with a sample of Palestrina’s famous “Missa Papae Marcelli”.
But her six-part Kyrie, which in its sublime solemnity made the legend of the salvation of church music from the demands of word-foreign polyphony quite credible, was only an appetizer for a veritable Bruckner concerto. The choir, now with a full complement of 52 throats, entered a soundscape of unexpected, expressive surprises and difficult vocal artistry. With the Gradual Mottes one still remained in the austere style ambience of a kind of liturgical neo-Gregorian music. But already in the Hallelujah of a St. Mary’s Mass, Peter Dijkstra, the choir’s proven maestro, exhausted all potential and brought the tenor section in particular to a forte that would have fit better in a cathedral than in the acoustics of the Prinzregententheater.
But that was just preparation for Bruckner’s Mass in E minor. There you could not only experience the radical expressionist and bold sound architect from his symphony, but also admire the choir’s high vocal culture. A concentrate of both delivered the amen in the Kyrie right from the start with a concentration of harmonic spectrums that was as complex as it was daring. Supported by the wind ensemble of the Radio Orchestra, Dijkstra then savored all the nuances between mystical piano and bright forte jubilee. This exploded the liturgical “cathedral” vessel and thereby legitimized the concert hall, but at the same time demonstrated that the vocal skills of the BR choir are unparalleled.