A Holy Grail ‘Missa’ at Disney Hall
/By Truman C. Wang
2/23/2026
Orfeó Català
Sunday afternoon at Walt Disney Concert Hall felt genuinely historic. Gustavo Dudamel — after 17 years with the LA Phil — finally tackled the piece he calls his "holy grail": Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Op. 123. And it was worth every year of anticipation.
This is not easy music. Beethoven himself considered it his greatest work, yet its 80-minute scale and punishing demands on every musician in the room keep it off concert programs. Astonishingly, Dudamel conducted the piece from memory, without a baton (as church choir directors do), and turned in a brilliant reading of the Missa.
I have attended many performances of Beethoven’s Missa, but none with a larger force or a more stellar solo quartet – soprano Pretty Yende, mezzo-soprano Sarah Saturnino, tenor SeokJong Baek, and baritone Rod Gilfry (substituting for the originally announced Nicholas Brownlee). The 125 voices from two of Barcelona's finest choral ensembles, the Orfeó Català and the Cor de Cambra del Palau de la Música Catalana, were prepared by their conductor Xavier Puig. The combined effect was nothing short of overwhelming.
Cor de Cambra del Palau de la Música Catalana
This was the Barcelona choir’s second collaboration with L A Phil, following their 2024 Fidelio in Spain. In the Missa, the sheer visceral excitement of the massive choral body (occupying five tiers behind the orchestra) was shattering: the shouts of “gloria” at the end of the Gloria fugue, and the even more staggering Credo and Sanctus fugues at warp speed (to my ear approaching Toscanini’s 140 metronome speed.) On the downside, some rhythmic and textural details were inevitably lost or drowned out: the inaudible soloists in Qui tollis, the smudged eighth notes in Laudamus te, the sudden hushed tone in Quoniam tu solus Sanctus. But I am nitpicking.
The orchestra played brilliantly and movingly for Dudamel, navigating the work's shifting emotional landscapes, from the war cries of military trumpets and drums in Agnus Dei, to the serene flute solo in Et incarnatus est, and the angelic solo violin in the Preludium and Benedictus. Beethoven’s Missa is a solemn prayer for peace, a peace that is hard-fought and hard-won.
"From my heart, may it go to the heart," Beethoven wrote at the top of the score. On Sunday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles, it did exactly that. A truly landmark concert that will be talked about for years to come.
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.