Recordings > Choral and Song
HAYDN:
Stabat Mater
Hoyt, Brackett; Sands, Lippold; Trinity Choir, Rebel Baroque Orchestra, Burdick. No texts. Naxos 8.572121
Few people know that Haydn's Stabat Mater was his most popular and widely disseminated choral work during his lifetime. We are accustomed to thinking of the late masses — written almost forty years later, in the early nineteenth century — such as the Paukenmesse and Nelsonmesse as the pinnacles of Haydn's sacred-music achievement. And frequent performances today, as well as an abundance of recordings of The Creation, make a good argument for that work's being esteemed Haydn's best endeavor in the sacred arena.
Haydn grew up a choirboy at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, even today the training ground of many Vienna choirboys. His earliest, rather precocious compositions were created there under Georg von Reutter. Stabat Mater was written early in Haydn's tenure as Kapellmeister at the Esterházy court, between 1766 and 1772. Subsequently, Haydn studied with Nicola Porpora, the most important voice teacher in all of Europe at the time, teacher of Farinelli and many other top-drawer opera singers. Not surprisingly, the solo vocal writing that comprises more than two thirds of the Stabat Mater is of an extremely high and virtuoso caliber. Therefore the solo quartet will be of particular importance to anyone interested in hearing this music.
Unfortunately, this is the weak part of this recording by the justly praised Trinity Choir and Rebel Baroque Orchestra. The soloists are all fine and correct, with fluid articulation and excellent intonation. There is no faulting their style, but none has the vocal depth of many of their more celebrated peers on other recordings. Baritone Richard Lippold does offer some spirited singing in the two bass arias "Pro peccatis suae gentis" and "Flammis orci ne succendar," but I sometimes found myself wishing for more sound on the bottom end. Most seductive of the solo offerings is the beautifully phrased "Fac me vere tecum flere" in Luthien Brackett's easy, appealing alto. The Trinity Choir is similarly fluid and transparent, but occasionally I pined for the punch of a German choir, as well a more heavy-handed approach in the orchestra to Haydn's expressive devices, such as repeated notes and syncopations meant to drive home Mary's tears and sobs. The most stirring music-making is achieved when the solo quartet and choir team up in one of Haydn's loveliest movements, "Virgo virginum praeclara." They seem to urge each other on to the sort of incisive singing for which this most dramatic of Christian texts fairly aches. 
DREW MINTER
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