BBC Music Magazine
February 2025
Choral & Song Choice

Chen Reiss (soprano), Varduhi Abrahamyan (mezzo), Daniel Behle (tenor), Tareq Nazmi (bass)

Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, Audi Jugendchorakademie, Jérémie Rhorer

Jérémie Rhorer and Le Cercle de l'Harmonie launch a new collaboration with Alpha Classics, with several projects planned, following the Mozart operas released on the label in 2016 and 2017. Here they tackle a monument of the sacred repertoire that is fascinating for its rich, complex, even ‘mysterious’ conception.

Rhorer tells us that his interpretation pays close attention to the question of tempi, which have often become progressively slower and heavier since the post-Romantic period: the tempi have ‘a direct bearing on the vocal comfort of the singers, since breath control is one of the great difficulties of this work’, he says. For this recording, he has called in a quartet of top-flight soloists along with the Audi Jugendchorakademie, a remarkable German youth choir founded in 2007. In conjunction with his period-instrument orchestra, soon to celebrate its twentieth anniversary, they offer a passionate vision of Beethoven’s masterpiece.

"It is Jérémie Rhorer’s uncompromising eloquence which bespeaks faith in the sublime greatness of this work, imparting its mysteries to the listener in ways that are as personally touching as they are revelatory." - BBC Music Magazine, February 2025