Roger Norrington has a special relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra. He makes them sound like a seasoned period-instrument orchestra, forbidding the strings from using vibrato and producing clear textures in the woodwind and brass sections. And yet, in his performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, the orchestra still sounded sumptuous and expressive.
His approach may be technically rigorous, but his interpretation was flexible and generous. In the opening Kyrie, he created a dramatic contrast between the delicate polyphony of the first section and the operatic central section. And in the prelude before the Benedictus, scored for strings and woodwind, the orchestra's ethereal sound matched the archaic style of the music. This slow, mysterious music reflects Beethoven's study of baroque and renaissance counterpoint, and dramatises Jesus's humanity. The passage contains one of the longest and most moving resolutions in the history of music, a symbol of the mystical transformation from heaven to earth. Norrington created a sense of rapt meditation in the orchestra - a dramatic preparation for the Benedictus, with its tender violin solo, here played by leader James Clark.
Any performance of the Missa Solemnis is fuelled by its vocal performances, however, and for all the Philharmonia Chorus's efforts, they could not match the sophistication of the orchestral playing. Yet their audible difficulty in negotiating Beethoven's tortuous vocal lines became an expressive advantage in passages such as the end of the Credo. The choral writing at this point is shockingly intense, as Beethoven forces the sopranos into a celestial - and painful - register. It was no surprise that the chorus sounded strained, but their full-blooded efforts revealed the extremity of this music.
In fact, the chorus was more successful musically than the soloists. The huge, operatic vibrato of soprano Amanda Halgrimson and mezzo-soprano Cornelia Kallisch sounded out of place in Norrington's soundworld; at least tenor Peter Bronder carried his solos with conviction.
This performance was defined by Norrington's infectious conducting. He made the music dance, and showed how the swinging rhythms of the final Agnus Dei celebrate the connections between the human world and the spiritual.
