8dio Lacrimosa Requiem

Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2014 Choral category winner! Purely on grounds of performance alone, this is one of the finest Mozart Requiems of recent years. John Butt brings to Mozart the microscopic care and musicological acumen that have made his Bach and Handel recordings so thought-provoking and satisfying.

A prize student of music theorist Simon Sechter and a good friend of Beethoven and Schubert, German composer Franz Lachner was appointed Royal Court Conductor in Munich in 1836 where he directed the Court Theater, the Court Church, and the Court Concert Hall for with pride, dedication, and professionalism for the next 33 years. However, the death of his patron Maximilian II and the ascension of Ludwig II, avid patron of Richard Wagner, effectively ended Lachner's career. Though he lived another 23 years, Lachner's music was rarely if ever performed.

Antonín Rejcha (1770, Prague - 1836 Paris) was a respected professor of counterpoint and fugal technique at Paris Conservatory, and an author of pedagogical works which even Bedřich Smetana and Fryderyk Chopin studied. He wrote wind quintets, piano fugues, overtures and symphonies. It wasn't until the late 20th century that the discovery of his manuscripts in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris revealed that he was also a composer of large works for choir and orchestra. One such discovery was Rejchas's Missa pro defunctis - Requiem, written in Vienna, where Rejcha lived from 1802 to 1808 before settling down in Paris.

«A mes yeux, cet enregistrement du requiem est incontounable, la sérénité qui s'en dégage, l'équilibre général, la qualité de l'interprétation tant vocale qu'instrumentale en font une version de premier plan, même si le choix est vaste, ma préférence est toujours restée pour cette version.»

Peter Schreier brought a lifetime's experience as a singer to the conductor's rostrum in his accounts of Mozart's Requiem, Coronation Mass, and motet Ave verum Corpus. The performances were recorded in Dresden between 1982 and 1992. A major plus is highly disciplined singing by the Leipzig Radio Chorus, whose clarity of diction and finely balanced ensemble adds much to your enjoyment of these performances; they're heard on their own account in the motet that concludes this reissue. The Requiem (in Süssmayr's completion) is powerfully and urgently driven.