No idea why, but I adored this record. For some reason it all sounded very exotic to me. Maybe it was so exotic because Mattiwilda Dobbs, the singer on Ave verum corpus, was described in the liner notes as “die erste Negersingerin”. Not a term we would expect nowadays, but hey, this record is from 1959.
Apart from exotic, it was also my first Mozart. Since I missed the overly popular Amadeus film, I did not follow the Mozart craze it caused. Also, for me Mozart only later because the babbling idiot the film showed, so I was unspoilt.
Believe it or not, I was singing this along. I wonder what my parents were thinking about that? If your kid does that, don’t be worried, it will all be okay. In later years he will just have a weird fascination for religious music.
As masses go, this is a cheerful one. The Dona nobis pacem sounds like they’re having a party. Compared to Bach Mozart lets in some light in the church.
The record itself is not in a real good state. Since it has such a special place for me, I have given it a thorough cleaning. But it has not been enough. It might be the pressing itself, but all s-ses sound terrible. I’m not sure the result on Spotify will be the same, because that one is the mono version, and mine is in stereo.