Paul McCreesh and his forces provide a fine blend of vigour and sensitivity, revealing the music's power and constant ingenuity… The soloists are a well-chosen quartet, with particularly notable contributions from Camilla Tilling's free and easy soprano and from Sarah Connolly, who demonstrates her technical command over a wide range.

McCreesh and his forces provide a fine blend of vigour and sensitivity, revealing the music's power and constant ingenuity.

Discussing the C minor Mass in a booklet interview, Paul McCreesh remarks that 'any attempt to complete it runs the risk of negating the qual- ity of what survives'. Most editors and performers agree, confining themselves to the sections Mozart actually composed, and filling out the missing parts in the Credo, 'Et incarnatus est' and Sanctus-Osanna.
Paul McCreesh gives us the familiar torso in a reading that combines a smallish chorus numbering around 30 with a period-instrument band. At a fairly urgent tempo, McCreesh's soloists, the radiant Camilla Tilling and the rich-toned Sarah Connolly, are excellent, with Connolly unfazed by her flights into high soprano territory. Elsewhere, Tilling perfectly catches the wondering pastoral innocence of the 'Et incarnatus est', taken at a gently lilting two-in-a-bar. In the choral numbers McCreesh is on top form.
There have been excellent period-instrument recordings from Hogwood and Gardiner (see below), but McCreesh, sharply responsive both to the Mass's neo-Baroque monumentality and its Italianate sensuousness, is at least their match in drama and colour; and DG's recording is exemplary. The Gabrieli Consort sing with precision, fresh, firm tone and marvellous dynamic control, while the strings play with notable grace and refinement in the solo numbers. The Kyrie unfolds with an inexorable tread (McCreesh is specially good at creating and maintaining rhythmic tension), and the 'Cum Sancto Spiritu' fugue, taken at the swiftest possible tempo, combines dancing agility with a thrilling cumulative sweep.
McCreesh's claims as a top recommendation are enhanced by the additional items, two magnificent, quasi-operatic scenas by Haydn and Beethoven. Connolly, in the Haydn (again taking the high tessitura, complete with top Cs, in her stride), and Tilling are both superb, marrying a classical nobility of line with a profound identification with the plights of these suffering heroines in extremis.