Prom 69 – Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis

Part of the BBC Proms.

Finding terror alongside spiritual awe, raising questions and doubts as well as proclaiming faith, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis is a work of visceral power – a public statement of intensely private belief.’From the heart – may it return to the heart!; the composer wrote at the top of a score that stretched the proportions and ambitions of the orchestral Mass to new limits. Sir John Eliot Gardiner – whose two benchmark recordings trace an ever-evolving relationship with the piece over many decades – conducts his period-instrument Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir.