Suppé: Missa Pro Defunctis in D Minor

Franz von Suppé occupies one of the more peculiar corners of the 19th-century repertoire — universally known, almost entirely unheard. Every concertgoer has sat through the Poet and Peasant overture at a pops concert, tapping a foot with mild guilty pleasure, and thought nothing more about it. That the man who wrote those irresistible theatrical confections also produced a substantial sacred work — a full Missa pro defunctis in d minor, no less — comes as a genuine surprise. Or it would, if anyone had been paying attention for the past 170 years.

The story of this score is almost novelistic. Suppé completed it in 1855, writing it partly in grief for his friend and patron Franz Pokorny, the theater director who had died five years earlier. He was in his mid-thirties, at the height of his creative confidence, and the result was dedicated — and the dedication accepted — by Pope Pius IX himself. Liturgically vetted by the papacy. Premiered in Vienna at the Josefstadt Piaristenkirche to genuine enthusiasm. And then, by degrees, forgotten — dismissed eventually as too Italianate, insufficiently solemn, not German enough in its bones. The score disappeared entirely after a Vienna reading in 1901, surfaced again in a Viennese library in 1988, and has remained largely unperformed since. The neglect is staggering.

That Suppé absorbed Italian influences is hardly surprising. He was born in Dalmatia, grew up in a culture saturated with Mediterranean sound, and — the biographical detail almost too good to be true — reportedly received assistance from Donizetti in Vienna, a distant relative who recognized something in the young composer. You can hear that lineage everywhere in this music: in the lyrical suppleness of the vocal writing, in the unashamed melodic generosity, in an approach to death that is consoling rather than terrifying. Critics who called it Italianate were not wrong. They simply thought the word was an insult.

The scoring Suppé prescribed is lavish for the period — 24 violins, 8 violas, and a choir of at least 64 singers that may be doubled. This is not a chamber work dressed up in vestments. It has genuine ambition, a ceremonial scale that suits the acoustic of Ebrach Abbey, a former Cistercian monastery in Franconia, where this live recording was made. The abbey’s stone resonance adds a natural bloom to the ensemble — not muddiness, but weight.

The Philharmonie Festiva is a young organization, founded only in 2008 by the Bavarian director Gerd Schaller, who draws its personnel primarily from the Munich Bach Soloists with reinforcements from the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Münchner Philharmoniker. A freelance pickup ensemble, in other words — but one assembled from serious professionals, and it shows. Schaller brings a background in opera to this music, which turns out to be exactly the right credential. He understands theatrical pacing, knows how to build a climax without telegraphing it three pages in advance, and never lets the liturgical frame become an excuse for inertia. The choral forces, by contrast, have nearly a century and a quarter of history behind them, founded in 1895, and they bring institutional memory — a kind of collective muscle memory in the service of the line — that younger ensembles simply cannot fake.

Among the soloists, the soprano Marie Fajtová and mezzo Franziska Gottwald blend with an ease that suggests genuine attention to each other rather than mere ensemble discipline — there’s a difference, and it’s audible. Tenor Tomislav Mužek brings a ringing clarity to his contributions without the tendency toward bluster that tenors in sacred music sometimes mistake for devotion.

Competing recordings of this work are — how to put this — not exactly a pressing problem. The few that exist haven’t circulated widely enough to constitute a tradition. Which means Schaller is essentially building the interpretive template from scratch, without the benefit of a lineage to either follow or argue with. That’s a precarious position. He handles it with intelligence, erring toward the warmth and forward momentum that the music itself seems to demand, rather than imposing a Teutonic gravity it was never designed to carry. The “Lacrimosa” unfolds with genuine emotional pressure; the brass writing in the “Dies irae” has real menace without losing its underlying lyricism.

What you’re left with is a album that makes a strong, specific case for a work that deserves far better than its current status as a musicological curiosity. This isn’t a masterpiece on the level of the Verdi Requiem — Suppé simply doesn’t reach those heights of dramatic synthesis — but it is a beautifully crafted, emotionally honest piece of music that sat in a library for 87 years and has now waited another 35 for a performance this committed. That’s long enough. Seek it out.