This radio performance is one of those that transmits, from another era to our own, some of what audiences found vital in an earlier day. The music was recorded in 1968 at the studios of the West German Radio in Cologne, but, as the compelling booklet notes convey, its performance style was rooted in the years after World War II. It was then, among the ruins (in Cologne in 1946, you could stand a mile away from the Cologne Cathedral and not see a single building in between), that conductor Günter Wand turned to sacred music ...
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This radio performance is one of those that transmits, from another era to our own, some of what audiences found vital in an earlier day. The music was recorded in 1968 at the studios of the West German Radio in Cologne, but, as the compelling booklet notes convey, its performance style was rooted in the years after World War II. It was then, among the ruins (in Cologne in 1946, you could stand a mile away from the Cologne Cathedral and not see a single building in between), that conductor Günter Wand turned to sacred music. His reading of the Beethoven Mass in C major, Op. 86, is impressive -- warm and devotional, imbued with the Romantic spirit that E.T.A. Hoffmann (whose writings are also nicely used in the booklet) detected in the mass but never falling into the trap of making the music sound like Wellington's Victory. Sample the beginning of the Credo (track 3): this crescendo is bombastic if overplayed and pointless if kept too much under control, but Wand is masterly. This is a full-throated and...
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