Koch International Classics' Vienna Choir Boys 500th Anniversary is a reissue of a disc first made available in a less English-friendly package in 1998, which was the Vienna Boys Choir's 500th anniversary year. Very few ensembles, and certainly no people, can claim to have been around so long. When the Vienna Boys Choir, then known as the "Court Choir Boys," sang their first chorus back in 1498, Maximilian I was emperor of the Habsburg Empire and Johannes Ockeghem was the flavor of the month. Rather than attempt to represent, in a single disc, 500 years' worth of choral music (impossible), Vienna Boys Choir's leader Agnes Grossmann has elected to program music from the time Viennese music itself was "king," including two works by a composer who started out as a Vienna choir boy,
Franz Schubert.
With the exception of
Schubert's Gesang der Geister, D. 714, the recording as a whole is a bit distant and blurred at the edges, with the boys balanced roughly equal in volume to the
Vienna Chamber Orchestra, in which case the boys wind up a bit behind the band. In Gesang der Geister, D. 714, the balance is just right, but the instrumental complement is made up of a smaller group than in the other pieces, and this is included as a showpiece for the older boys and the adult Chorus Viennensis. The performance of
Haydn's seldom-recorded Grosses Te Deum, H. 23c/2, is a very lively one, and gets things off to a grand start, but the early
Schubert Magnificat in C, D. 486, also gets off to a rousing start afterward in a bit of bad programming that could have been avoided through better sequencing of the tracks. The Magnificat features an impressive boy soprano who is not identified by name, whereas others are identified by name as participating, and the book does not tell us what they are doing in this project.
Fans of Antonio Salieri anxious to prove that he is not the "mediocrity" portrayed in Amadeus will not be pleased to hear the opening of his never before recorded Coronation Te Deum, composed for the 1792 Coronation of Emperor Franz II. With its rising triads and uncomfortable-sounding, high-lying writing for the boys, this piece could easily qualify as something of which the Viennese court could unconditionally approve, generally not a good sign for revival in the current context. As it goes along, the Coronation Te Deum's expressiveness deepens, but the unfamiliar Salieri work takes its toll on the musicians, who strain against it; the orchestra in particular is tentative and sheepish. This performance would definitely have benefited from another rehearsal or two. On more familiar ground with the
Mozart Coronation Mass, K. 317, the combined forces rip through the piece at a frantic pace, resulting in a hectic and sloppy performance that is not nearly as well-scrubbed as the boys themselves are. It's a shame that the Vienna Boys Choir couldn't get more love from Koch than this, but it is better than no observance whatsoever of this auspicious and highly singular anniversary.