Home listening - heavenly Haydn, and a good week for Farinelli

The Guardian 0

An exemplary recording of the Missa Cellensis; Ann Hallenberg channels the great castrato; and in praise of Opera on 3

• I love Haydn’s masses. They speak of an unusual state of contentment between the artist and the Almighty: an early biographer of the composer said that the goodness of divine nature “inspired him with such confidence and joy that he could have written even a Miserere in tempo allegro”. The late mass settings have quasi-symphonic proportions, while the finest of the earlier masses (1782) is the huge Missa Cellensis “in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary”, also called the Mariazeller Mass. This receives a glorious new recording from the RIAS Kammerchor and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin under Justin Doyle (Harmonia Mundi).

From its hushed slow choral opening, through some buoyant fugues and angular chromaticisms, Haydn traces a spiritual journey with great exuberance – notably in the flamboyant roulades of the soprano arias, well dispatched by Johanna Winkel. The chamber choir of German broadcaster RIAS has kept up with the times and produces beautifully cool, clean-edged textures, which Doyle moulds with skill.