You Play Bach Your Way; He'll Play it His
There are a number of fine performances of the B Minor Mass on original instruments, but King has gone the extra step and uses boys' voices not only in the chorus but in the solos. Furthermore, he uses German boys, whose sound is different from that of most English choral foundations. How you react to this recording depends on your tolerance for boy soloists. Are these boys as accomplished as a woman soloist? Probably not, but these boys are very, very good; they bring a freshness to their solos, and, more importantly, they are as close to the timbre Bach would have heard in church music as one can get. This is my favorite recording of this unsurpassed masterpiece. When you add in instrumental performances are firsr-rate, you can hardly do better.