How do you follow Mahler 8?

Last night’s Birmingham concert in our CBSO100 series:

Beethoven Missa Solemnis Ex Cathedra / CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★

Performing this work work just a week after the CBSO’s stupendous Mahler’s eighth symphony was a gamble. With those massive hall-filling forces still in the mind’s eye the sight of a slimmed-down orchestra (just two double basses) and single choir on the platform was a shock. Such comparisons are invidious, after all Beethoven didn’t compose a Mass of a Thousand, but surely it would have suited the scale, and style of this performance to have used the Town Hall instead.

Ex Cathedra is celebrating its 50^th anniversary and there was, as always, much to admire here under founder and conductor Jeffrey Skidmore. In his programme notes he wrote: “the music is awe-inspiring but we shouldn’t be overawed.” It’s a compliment, albeit a back-handed one, to say that we weren’t. The triple forte and the trombone entry at “omnipotens” sounded muted and the martial music – which startled and bemused early listeners – merely quaint. What succeeded were the work’s many quiet and reflective passages: the wonder and mystery of the Incarnation; the quiet tread of the organ in the Praeludium; the lovely violin solo, truly dolce cantabile. The choir were first rate as were the soloists, while tucked away obscurely in the choir: the radiant Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Sophie Rennert (mezzo), Andrew Tortise (tenor) and Roderick Williams, although he lacked the ideally resonant bass notes for the Agnus Dei. The interval was a dim idea: people munching ice-cream between the Credo and Sanctus hardly fitted Beethoven’s performance directive – “Mit Andacht” (With Devotion).

Norman Stinchcombe