Bayan Northcott
BBC Music Magazine
December 2013

Boston Baroque here celebrates its 40th anniversary of pioneering period performance in the US with a vigorous, well-paced reading of Haydn's fieriest Mass—composed in the summer of 1798 around the time that Nelson was decimating Napoleon's fleet at the battle of the Nile, and premiered as news of the victory reached the Esterházy Palace at Eisenstadt. Recorded in a not-too-resonant acoustic, this new account opens with impact … and the quartet of soloists led by agile soprano Mary Williams proves a well integrated team …