With this release, Profil Edition Günther Hänssler continues its program of reissuing items that once appeared on the Calig label. This one pairs Michael Haydn's most Mozartian setting of the mass, the Missa in honorem Sanctae Ursulae or "Chiemsee-Mass" (1793) with Mozart's familiar motet Ave verum corpus, KV 618 (1791), and his earlier, more elaborate setting of the antiphon Regina coeli, KV 127 (1772). The performance is led by
Hans Rudolf Zobeley and features Der Münchner MotettenChor and Das ResidenzOrchester and a rank of solo singers led by the estimable
Juliane Banse, just starting out when this was recorded in 1990. She sounds good, but a single soprano soloist does not a mass for soloists, chorus, and orchestra make, and she sounds like a ray of sunlight among a dismal morass of dark clouds and generally bad weather. The choral singing is shaky, the orchestra not well drilled, and the overall sound of this recording is murky, diffuse, and plodding; the Ave verum is downright static.
Michael Haydn's Chiemsee-Mass is an important work that deserves a good recording, and in 2004 it got one; it was among the last pieces recorded by the King's Consort for Hyperion before Robert King and that ensemble parted company. When one acquires recordings from another label, one ought to make sure the recordings on that label are worth reissuing, and in this particular case -- despite the presence of
Banse and the relative rarity of the Haydn work -- it wasn't a good call.