And everything falls into place: Franz Welser-Möst with Schubert's E flat major Mass at the Salzburg Festival

Created: 08/17/2022, 07:47

By: Markus Thiel

Franz Welser-Möst with the Wiener Singverein and the Camerata Salzburg.

© Marco Borrelli

In every bar you can feel: That's right, that's how it has to be.

Franz Welser-Möst succeeds in giving a model performance of Schubert's E flat major Mass in Salzburg.

The key board has always been small.

And some of the colleagues have taken one of these silver things with them to conductor heaven forever, Claudio Abbado and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, for example.

Franz Welser-Möst still owns one of the rare copies: the key to Schubert.

Bach or Beethoven, one hears and suffers them from time to time, can take a lot.

From unrestrained romanticism to ego trips to the sometimes vegan failed "historical performance practice".

With Franz Schubert, on the other hand, things get very tight.

But then afternoons like those at the Salzburg Festival happen with the Mass in E flat major and cleverly interspersed with the master’s treasures, “Intende voci” and “Tantum ergo”, and listen: everything fits together wonderfully.

Every bar exudes the assurance: that's the way it should be.

It's a fine line along which one could slip into nationalism.

But maybe it's really the case that you not only have to know where this music comes from, but also have to have breathed in and felt everything - as a compatriot of the composer.

The folklore, the song-like, the tradition-bound, also critical religiosity.

In this respect it is fitting that the Camerata Salzburg and the Wiener Singverein are active on the stage in the Haus für Mozart.

It is clear to everyone: the E flat major Mass, Schubert's last and greatest, is not for the cathedral.

Despite violent outbursts of despair, as in the final “Miserere nobis” of the Gloria or in the hurled “Crucifixus” of the Credo, this is inward-looking, intimate, untheatrical art.

Luxuriously cast soloist quintet

Actually, Welser-Möst has been the Mister Richard Strauss of the festival for several summers, this year also Puccini's guardian with "Il Trittico".

However, he seems most at home with Schubert, as can be seen here.

The tempi are fluid throughout, but never rushed.

The relationship to Mozart is strikingly clear.

Everything is felt to be cantabile, sometimes with, sometimes without lyrics.

Only when every instrumental phrase can be sung has one understood Schubert.

The trickiest thing, as in his symphonies, is the combination of characteristically driving accompanying figures and overarching melos.

Most beautiful in this fair in "Et incarnatus est".

This merging is also successful because there are often only tiny accentuations that are never pregnant with meaning.

The details are present, but you still experience each part in its multi-layered wholeness.

The Camerata shines with its strings, especially with a grandiose clarinetist.

Unlike many of his colleagues, Welser-Möst doesn't wave through the long fugues either, designs them precisely, is always with the choir.

The Wiener Singverein may not be a thunder ensemble, but the performance benefits from that.

Likewise the soloists (Golda Schultz, Katharina Magiera, Maciej Kwaśnikowski and Tareq Nazmi), who are more than luxuriously cast for their short tasks.

Julian Prégardien is still allowed to play the solo in "Intende voci".

The timbre and composition are ideal for Schubert.

But one also hears: not such an easy task.

Long, heartfelt applause.

Maybe we'll leave Mister Strauss alone for a while.

Franz Welser-Möst needs a Schubert opera in Salzburg.