Missa Solemnis: Documentary and Performance

Missa Solemnis: Documentary and Performance (A film by Uli Aumüller). With Hofkapelle Stuttgart.

Beethoven's Missa solemnis is the one work the composer admired above all his compositions. It was written for his great patron and friend Archduke Rudolf of Austria at

around the same time that he embarked on his Ninth Symphony and as the writer Donald Tovey noted, 'there is no choral and no orchestral writing, earlier or later, that shows a more thrilling sense of the individual colour of every chord.' This insightful documentary follows Frieder Bernius on a journey of discovery as he immerses himself in Beethoven's monumental masterpiece in preparation for a recording.