A strange combination, that of Bruckner and Michael Haydn. You will hardly ever find both composers on the same CD. There is a distance in time, from rococo to high romance. And there is a distance in reputation. Bruckner, after all, is a big name, while Michael Haydn has never emerged from the shadow of his genius brother Joseph. Most choral singers will have sung a motet by Bruckner at some point,
… such as Locus Iste. But who can name a work by Michael Haydn? Yet the Leipzig Radio Choir wants to let us hear how both Haydn and Bruckner were rooted in Austrian Catholicism. Both composers have settings of Christus Factus Est, the liturgical text of which belongs in the Maundy Thursday Mass. The CD begins with Bruckner's popular Locus Iste, about the mysterious place that is a holy place. Haydn ends just as mysteriously with Tenebrae factae sunt, about the darkness of Golgotha. (HJ)more
