Mozart Requiem by Nikollaus Harnoncourt

Frieder Bernius and his Stuttgart forces weigh in with one of the finer Mozart Requiems in a very crowded field–and to ensure this performance’s relative exclusivity, it’s one of only a handful of recordings that use the edition by Franz Beyer, an intelligent and persuasive 1971 effort to correct “obvious textural errors” and some decidedly un-Mozartian features in the orchestration attributable to Franz Süssmayr, Mozart’s pupil/assistant who completed the work after the master’s death. This live concert performance from 1999 offers well-set tempos (including a vigorous Kyrie fugue), infectious rhythmic energy from both chorus and orchestra, robust, precise, musically compelling choral singing, a first rate quartet of soloists–and, especially considering its concert-performance setting, impressively detailed and vibrant sonics. The CD also features informative notes by Beyer himself.

Kaum ein anderes Werk der Musikgeschichte ist so voller Geheimnisse wie Mozarts Requiem: Vom ominösen Auftraggeber bis zur immer wieder geäußerten Kritik an der Vervollständigung des Fragments durch den Mozart-Schüler Süßmayr. Die Quellenlage ist unübersichtlich, neben Süßmayr waren noch weitere ›Vervollständiger‹ mit am Werk, das Witwe Constanze als eines von Mozart allein veröffentlichen wollte.

At the end of April 1791, Wolfgang Amadé Mozart applied for the position of second Kapellmeister at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, hoping to inherit the position from Leopold Hofmann, the incumbent Kapellmeister, the City Council of Vienna accepted Mozart’s petition in a strongly worded decree as a basis for the text in the vocal passages of his Sieben Klangräume accompanying the Unfinished Fragments of Mozart’s Requiem KV 626.

Much is known about the special and particular circumstances surrounding the composition of Mozart’s Requiem. 1791 was a tumultuous year, and before Mozart’s life was cut short at the start of December he had composed, among other works, Die Zauberflöte, La Clemenza di Tito, the Clarinet Concerto and evidently this Requiem, although it was left in an unfinished state. If the mist and mystery surrounding both the creation of the Requiem and Mozart’s death have been lifting in recent times, a certain myth still persists….

In the era prior to recordings, the only way for an audience unable to organize a symphonic performance to get to know a large work was to perform it, or hear it performed, in a chamber or keyboard arrangement. Recordings of arrangements from the nineteenth century have appeared in a steady stream, and while they're no substitute for the real thing, it's interesting to observe the artistry of the individual arrangers.

This is an ATMA Classique reissue of one of Les Violons du Roy’s seminal discs: the orchestra’s 2002 Dorian label recording of Mozart’s Requiem as revised and completed by Robert D. Levin. The recording won the JUNO® Award for Best Classical Album of the year in the Vocal or Choral Performance category. Founding conductor Bernard Labadie brought Les Violons du Roy and its the fifteen member core together in 1984. The ensemble specializes in the vast repertoire of music for chamber orchestra, performed on modern instruments but in a stylistic manner most appropriate to the work’s era.

December 1791, the final Requiem. Tired by his many voyages around Europe ever since he had been rejected in Vienna, Mozart could not find the strength to honour his promise to compose a Requiem in record time for the person who had commissioned it… He was in fact to be struck down by illness during its composition and it was his pupil Süssmayr who finished the work according to his instructions. This version remains the most convincing, for the presence and grandeur of Mozart are present everywhere - in the baroque imagination and the classical style, in the universal unrest and the sheer terror of a man alone in the face of Death.

One old-school Mozart maestro who would have nothing to do with modern notions of Classical ''authenticity'' is Carlo Maria Giulini, a great conductor who has made a specialty of Mozart`s music throughout his long career, which spanned some 23 seasons in Chicago. Giulini`s second recording of the unfinished Requiem Mass-his second with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, even more attentive to his musical desires this time around-must be the slowest ever recorded. As such it is characteristic of the late Giulini manner: The reading is suffused by an ultra-serene religiosity that obeys no rules of performance style other than its own.

This 2-CD set contains recordings of music conducted by Gary Bertini when he was chief conductor of the Radio Symphony Orchestra Cologne of the West-German Radio Corporation Cologne (WDR). In the Mass in C Minor, the first soprano part is full of virtuoso technical difficulties – especially in the famous “Et incarnatus est” passage – and here legendary soprano Arleen Augér interprets it in an exemplary manner.