This concert was dubbed a “musical postcard from 18th-century Vienna”, with sacred and secular offerings spanning six decades. Finding works to programme alongside Haydn’s late ‘Nelson Mass’, or, if you prefer, Missa in augustiis, provides an opportunity for some imaginative thinking. A compare-and-contrast evening of Classical era composers makes for an obvious traversal, if somewhat unadventurous. The skill is to include works that will not be dwarfed by the ‘mighty oak’ that is Haydn’s Mass, and which can stand proud as memorable creations, without danger of being viewed as merely concert fillers. In this respect, the coupling of a late Baroque work by the Bohemian-born Jan Disma Zelenka and three masterpieces by Mozart was a novel choice, one that drew attention to the individual personality of one and the genius of the other.
Proceedings began with Zelenka’s setting of the Miserere (Psalm 50/51) which, according to conductor Peter Whelan, was written in response to the death of two friends. Bold harmonies, pulsing rhythms and arresting scales caught the ear, with the 40 strong members of the Choir of the Age of Enlightenment impressing in their delivery of the Lenten text. Yet the prosaic fugue sounded like one of those ‘off the peg’ creations that would be manufactured by any aspiring composer, especially one who was Vice-Kapellmeister at the royal court at Dresden. If the choir could do little to improve its workaday manner, American soprano Erin Morley brought pearly tones to the central ‘Gloria patri’, her voice wrapping itself round the words with admirable poise and bringing lustre to its brief cadenza.
With no opportunity for applause Peter Whelan slipped straight into Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music (the key is identical), a gem of a work also written to honour two friends, both of whom were members of the Masonic lodge to which Mozart belonged. The link was a neat idea, though entirely lost on two visitors behind me who, despite the stylistic change and difference in wind sonorities, thought it was an extension of the Zelenka. Clear to me was the work’s gravitas, mystery too and, above all, Mozart’s distinct colouring, the whole beautifully balanced and affectionately shaped.
Its solemnity yielded to a pair of ‘insertion’ arias, solos originally conceived for specific singers to highlight their talents, and written for performance as ‘made to measure’ replacement or supplementary arias for another composer’s finished opera. For these gems of the 1780s, Erin Morley returned to exhibit a copper-bottomed technique and an easy-on-the-ear timbre perfectly suited to the joy and melancholy of “Schon lacht der holde Frühling”. Here she made light of its coloratura elements and enjoyed some exquisite clarinet support from Katherine Spencer. Similarly refined were the string pizzicatos and honeyed oboe of David Bates for Mozart’s “Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!”. Morley’s even tone was heard to advantage across its wide vocal range and she pulled off a show-stopping high E flat, holding the audience in thrall.
Shortly before the end of the 18th century during Haydn’s extraordinarily productive Indian summer, he completed his Missa in Augustiis, its youthful vitality belying a composer well into his sixties. There’s a sense of trepidation about the work too, not least because much of Austria in 1798 was occupied by Napoleon’s armies, and only the previous year Bonaparte’s forces had shelled Vienna. Haydn’s choice of title Missa in augustiis can translate as Mass for troubled times or Mass in time of anxiety, its later appellation, the ‘Nelson Mass’, given after Nelson’s victory at the battle of the Nile.
A sense of foreboding was brilliantly conveyed by the OAE in the ‘Kyrie’s’ fanfare-like opening, its martial-like atmosphere prefacing the choir’s opening plea that was thrown out with remarkable power and with a fearsomely explosive ‘K’. So vigorous was the singing, I was reminded of the celebrated recording of the work by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge under David Willcocks. Elsewhere, there was plenty of attack in the ‘Gloria’ (offbeat accents bouncing off the page with military precision), and impressive forward momentum in the ‘Credo’, yet nicely contrasted for a rapt ‘Et in incarnatus’. The spell was broken for a tuning break, but the ‘Sanctus’ was gloriously ‘still’ before the choir ‘took flight’ in the soaring lines of ‘Hosanna in excelsis’ and buoyant for the close of the ‘Agnus Dei’.
Morley took the lion’s share of the solo allocation with aplomb, reliably firm and agile when required. Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Guy Cutting (tenor) and William Thomas (bass) were a well-matched team, sensitive to one another in ensemble work and each making singular contributions of their own, and tellingly so in the ‘Benedictus’. If there were no great surprises in this performance, there was no question of the superb artistry from every quarter. Of course, alert playing and singing from these experienced musicians comes as standard, but throughout this performance it was communicated with an unmistakable zeal.
David Truslove
PROMS 2026: The OAE Plays Mozart and Haydn
Zelenka – Miserere in C minor; Mozart – Masonic Funeral Music; Aria ‘Schon lacht der holde Frühling’; Aria ‘Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!’; Haydn – Mass in D minor, ‘Nelson Mass’
Erin Morley – soprano; Helen Charlston – mezzo-soprano; Guy Cutting – tenor; William Thomas – bass; Choir of the Age of Enlightenment; Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; Peter Whelan – conductor
Royal Albert Hall, London, 9 August 2026
All photos by BBC/Mark Allan