Prom 67: Missa Solemnis

Royal Albert Hall, LondonColin Davis recently likened conducting Beethoven's Missa Solemnis to "failing to reach the top of Mount Everest". Ranked among the grandest of human confrontations with the idea of God, the score was the product of immense struggle. For a deaf man to have composed it, George Steiner once remarked, was "to have wrestled with the angel". The struggle is invariably replicated in performance, thanks to the extreme demands Beethoven places on his musicians. To attempt the wo...

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