Masur Bids MSO Farewell with Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis
David Lewellen
PUBLISHED
Tagged Under: 2025.26 Season, Chorus, Classics
Ken-David Masur’s farewell performances of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra also represent the culmination of a journey with the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus.
“My time here has been framed by the chorus,” the outgoing music director said recently by phone, thinking back to his first engagement as a guest conductor when he led choral works by Ravel and Vaughan Williams. In his final season, he has deliberately taken on several monuments of the choral repertoire, concluding with Beethoven’s epic work that has not been performed here since 2007.
Pieces such as the Missa solemnis are “markers in the history of an organization,” Masur said, and he planned years ahead for the scheduling and spacing of major works. “We did other works that we knew would be stepping stones,” he said, such as Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Brahms’s German Requiem, and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. And of course, the MSO did Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 last fall, near the beginning of the subscription season.
Performing the Missa solemnis alongside Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in the same season “is rarely done on a practical level,” Masur said. “But we wanted a crescendo and a trajectory.” This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, which was another reason to program extra-challenging repertoire.
The Missa solemnis, which translates as “solemn Mass,” uses the traditional Latin Mass text that Catholic churchgoers would have heard every Sunday. Setting it to music was common, but in this case, Beethoven’s imagination went far beyond anything that the normal liturgy would support. “It was so different from anything that had ever been written before,” Masur said. “It’s like the last movement of Beethoven’s ninth symphony, repeated five times.”
The 80-minute work expands on each of the five sections of the Mass to unprecedented length and complexity, with chorus and soloists weaving in and out of the texture. Masur said that the MSO will place the four vocal soloists between the orchestra and the chorus, instead of out in front, to reflect their place as part of the ensemble.
“It’s a marathon of a work,” Masur said. “It requires everyone to go to the limits, but the physical isn’t as important as the mental, the spiritual. It dives into the big existential questions. Beethoven is asking questions of the earthly and the heavenly realm,” both in secular terms with the finale of the ninth symphony and with the sacred text of the Missa solemnis.
“It’s been a very heavy season,” said Christina Williams, who is the chorus manager as well as a singer. “All of the singers are stretching themselves in terms of stamina.” Preparing the Beethoven requires not just musicality and expression, Williams said, but also conditioning. “We are athletes — vocal athletes,” she said, “and you can’t run a marathon starting from nothing. We have to train for this.”
As an alto, she thinks she has it easier for this work. “Hats off to the sopranos,” she said. “They have the most difficult part. They are up in the stratosphere. I joked to a friend that Beethoven must have been jilted by a soprano, and he said, ‘No, he just didn’t care,’ and I think that’s probably right.”
The chorus has been hard at work since performing its last monumental piece — Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in March. Now it is about to come together, Williams said. “We have to make enough sound to get through the orchestra but not blow out our voices,” she said. “It will be quite an epic experience.”
“In some ways, this is Beethoven’s forgotten masterpiece,” Masur said. “It doesn’t have quotable moments like his Symphony No. 9. It’s meditative and spiritual.” In that vein, he said that he will look forward to concertmaster Jinwoo Lee’s solo during the Benedictus. “I appointed him,” he said, “and he’s now the transition, to continue to lead the orchestra from that chair.”
Looking back, Masur said, “We’ve had a rich opportunity. I truly love working with the chorus and with Cheryl,” referring to Milwaukee Symphony Chorus Director Cheryl Frazes Hill. “There was an intentional building to this moment, and I’m deeply grateful.”
