Bruckner: Mass In E Minor/Motets

Choir of King's College Cambridge, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Sir Stephen Cleobury

Bruckner's E Minor Mass and a selection of his profoundly beautiful motets were selected by Sir Stephen Cleobury as his last album at King's, recorded only a few months before his death. Perhaps the deepest and most spiritual of Bruckner's masses, the 'Mass in E minor' is unusual in its scoring for choir, wind and brass. It is recorded here by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in King's College Chapel. The album is accompanied by a specially-commissioned Appreciation for Sir Stephen, written by Professor Iain Fenlon, as well as Shades of the Past in Bruckner's Sacred Music - another commissioned essay on Bruckner's works by Dr. Martin Ennis.

Bruckner:
 Mass No. 2 in E minor
 Tota pulchra es, antiphon, WAB 46
 Virga Jesse floruit
 Ave Maria (1861), WAB 6
 Christus factus est, WAB 11
 Ecce sacerdos magnus
 Locus iste, WAB 23

"A feature that sets Cleobury’s version apart from most other recordings is the use of boys’ voices for the soprano and alto parts, heard immediately in the haunting a cappella opening of the Kyrie, the trebles sounding strikingly pure and radiant...Another feature of Cleobury’s recording is the fleetness of the interpretation...I never felt that the performance was too fast, however, the choice of tempos throughout in keeping with the freshness of the approach and the modest scale of the forces employed."
Gramophone Magazine - December 2020