Mozart: Requiem in D Minor, K. 626 [Hybrid SACD with CD-ROM track of Mozart's Original Manuscript]

Mozart: Requiem in D Minor, K. 626 [Hybrid SACD with CD-ROM track of Mozart's Original Manuscript]

Mozart: Requiem in D Minor, K. 626 [Hybrid SACD with CD-ROM track of Mozart's Original Manuscript]

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CD Details

Composer: W. A. Mozart
Conductor: Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Performer: Concentus Musicus Wien
Performer: Arnold Schoenberg Choir
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2004-08-10
Music Label: Harmonia Mundi
Soundtracks:

Requiem
Kyrie
Dies Irae
Tuba Mirum
Rex Tremendae
Recordare
Confutatis
Lacrimosa
Domine Jesu
Hostias
Sanctus
Benedictus
Agnus Dei
Lux Aeterna

Music reviews of Mozart: Requiem in D Minor, K. 626 [Hybrid SACD with CD-ROM track of Mozart's Original Manuscript]

Music Review: Neither great nor terrible
Rating: 3 Stars

I find the praise European and American critics heap on any new recording from Harnoncourt tiresome in the extreme. What I find equally as tiresome are exhibitions of Harnoncourt's ego, which are on display in his notes to this issue.

"...time after time in my days as an orchestral musician (Harnoncourt was an orchestra cellist before ascending to the podium) I was forced to play (Mozart's G minor music) in such harmless and sugary interpretations that in the end I couldn't bear this misunderstanding of Mozart's music any longer. I had no choice but to leave the orchestra and take up the baton myself!"

Is the world better off for this? Some think so but not me. I find an annoying sameness to many of Harnoncourt's recordings. The fault tends to lie in his wayward reading of scores, his habit to merging passion with unemotional personal involvement, and tendencies to make himself larger than the music he presents.

Prima facie evidence of that exits on this recording in the "Hostias" section of the Offertorium, where he drives the chorus to finish in 3:02, which must be a world record for this section. Elsewhere, I found this interpretation varied uncomfortably between operatic approaches by the soloists and objectivity by the conductor, mated to an SACD recording that isn't very special by 2006 standards.

Recorded during concert in Vienna's Musikvereinsaal in late 2003, the performance includes some big name soloists -- soprano Christine Schafer, alto Bernarda Fink, tenor Kurt Streit and bass Gerald Finley -- Harnoncourts Arnold Schoenberg Choir and Concenuts Musicus Vienna, his regular band and chorus. For those of you not conversant with period performance style, you may not like the sour sound of the band's brass and woodwinds.

I think the singers and chorus do fine but I find little in the overall interpretation that is very memorable. For all Harnoncourt's talk in the notes about the Requiem being a revolutionary work that even put off Beethoven -- whom Harnoncourt claims called the score "too wild and terrible" -- I found nothing individual outside that terrible Hostias and Harnoncourt's usual tendency to emotional detachment.

The super audio recording is OK by 2006 standards but doesn't come close to the better choral recordings I've heard (check my reviews of Mozart's Missa Solemnis and Verdi's Requiem by Ormandy). I don't have my 5.1 system hooked up for surround sound but I listened to the back speakers in my den and didn't hear anything different that what came out the front.

Harnoncourt's brief essay about the music is interesting and there is a CD-ROM of the score for those of you that like to play disks in your computer.

I played my current favorite recording of this music -- the one recorded by Bruggen and forces in Japan in 1998 -- immediately after hearing this one. I like Bruggen's emotional attachment to the music far more than this one. While the Bruggen recording is in concert stereo that is only half as good as Harnoncourt's, it is still more appealing and a more satisfying musical experience.

Harnoncourt has certainly done some great work in the past including his masterly recording of Schubert's D. 950 mass. But, for this one, my advice is to stick with whatever your favorite is and borrow a copy from your library before investing your money. After hearing this, there is no justification for the hyperbolic critical press it has received. I don't think it will long stand the test of time as part of your collection.

More Mozart: Requiem in D Minor, K. 626 [Hybrid SACD with CD-ROM track of Mozart's Original Manuscript] free music reviews:
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Description of Mozart: Requiem in D Minor, K. 626 [Hybrid SACD with CD-ROM track of Mozart's Original Manuscript]

Beethoven called Mozart's Requiem "wild and terrible," and that's what we get in Harnoncourt's new recording. Ominous dread hangs from every note of the dark opening measures, the Rex tremendae and Confutatis are driven with terrifying strength, and the supplications of the Lacrimosa, with their weeping stabbings of the orchestra, are freighted with emotional power. The Tuba mirum duet of bass soloist and trombone has a beauty almost never achieved in other readings. Nor does Harnoncourt overstep the stylistic boundaries of this classical-era work; rather, the intensity is heightened for being in the idiom of its time. Call it a Romantic reading of a Classical piece that looks forward to a more unbuttoned era. The soloists couldn't be better; the orchestra is first-rate, the chorus, sensational, singing with a sense of color, line, and emotion,. Harnoncourt uses the Beyer edition of Süssmayr's completion of the work, and Mozart's unfinished original manuscript can be accessed via a CD-ROM track, which scrolls as the music plays. This release gets my vote as the best Mozart Requiem on disc, all the more impressive for being a live concert performance in excellent sound. --Dan Davis

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