A new recording of Delius's "Eine Messe des Lebens"

[adriano]

Sir Mark Elder conducts this difficult oratorio with great skill and passion. The Bergen Philharmonic and Choruses are well-prepared. The only miscast is, in my personal opinion, baritone Roderick Williams, who has a really beautiful voice, but a rather problematic wobble. We had him already in that Chandos CD with the excerpts from Bernard Herrmann's "Wuthering Heights"... This leading Delius part should be sung by a baritone with a great linear voice! Though, reviewers are happy with him...
The other soloists are good.

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/articles/5631--recording-of-the-week-deliuss-a-mass-of-life-from-sir-mark-elder-and-the-bergen-philharmonic#:~:text=But%20this%20superb%20new%20set,all%20Elder's%20masterly%20grasp%20on

https://limelight-arts.com.au/reviews/delius-a-mass-of-life-roderick-williams-bergen-philharmonic-mark-elder/

https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/choral-song/delius-a-mass-of-life

I think the best recordings (for me) are still the older ones, those conducted by Beecham, Groves and Del Mar...

[Alan Howe]

Agreed, Adriano. I have Groves and Hickox, but I just don't like Williams' unsteady voice, so I'm unlikely to buy Elder's recording.

[adriano]

Well, Alan, in a way, the most apt and steady voice in Mark Elder's recording is tenor Bror Magnus Tedenes...

An ideal cast of "A Mass of Life" can be heard in Malcolm Sargent's exciting (and never commercially released) BBC performance of 1966:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3M4313GcxI

or here:
http://thompsonian.info/delius-mass-english.html

It is sung in English, but listen to Heather Harper, Yvonne Minton, Ronald Dowd and John Cameron!
Cameron too has occasional wobbling sections, but he controls them with his sympathetic and natural vibrato.

Such a pity that Beecham's performance of 1951, featuring young Fischer-Dieskau, has not been preserved!