Enoch zu Guttenberg’s Missa Solemnis gets the listener’s attention. “Art has to convey something”, says the conductor, “The listener has to understand what the piece is saying”. Guttenberg knows how to interpret the multiple ideas of Beethoven, the numerous musical pictures, in a striking way. Human humility and divine dignity are vividly set against each other.

Enoch zu Guttenberg interprets the dramatic parts of the mass with vigour, the intimate passages prayerfully. The credo is a very distinctive example of this. The verse depicting Christ’s entombment is accompanied by melancholic funeral music, which turns into explosive songs of jubilation the next moment as the theme turns to resurrection.

Ludwig van Beethoven signed his work with the motto “From the heart – it shall again touch hearts“. Enoch zu Guttenberg has taken this motto and made it the benchmark for his interpretation.