Gunar Letzbor, the St. Florian Boys' Choir and Ars Antiqua Austria here present Georg Muffat’s splendid Missa in Labore Requies. Muffat (1653-1704) was a consciously and intentionally heterogeneous composer, melding characteristics of German, French and Italian music into his own in a most individual manner. For the recording, the Gurk Cathedral proved to be an ideal location, allowing the spatial effects of the five choirs to be impressively reproduced. The two vocal choirs can be heard to the right and left of the imaginary middle axis, as are the string and wind choirs, whilst the trumpet choir sounds forth majestically from an elevated center position. In this way, one can comprehend why this monumental work represents the pinnacle of the genre – perhaps comparable only to H. I. F. Biber's Missa Salisburgensis.
