Requeim Archive

MOZART: Requiem, Soloists /Dunedin Consort/ John Butt – Linn vinyl

by Audiophile Audition | Mar 21, 2016 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews

MOZART: Requiem K. 626 (reconstruction of the first performance) – Joanne Lunn, sop./ Rowan Hellier, alto/Thomas Hobbs, tenor/ Matthew Brook, bass-bar./Dunedin Consort/ John Butt – Linn vinyl CKH 549, 47 mins. (7-10-15) (Dist. by Naxos) *****: Trying to replicate the sound of the premiere performance of the work in the 18th century. There are more than 125 recordings of Mozart’s Requiem formally available these days, all the old and ancient ones of course, plus rafts of new, often more ascetically splendid ones conducted by names like Herreweghe and Higginbottom. But this new one from Linn is different. It’s as if Carlo-Maria Giulini’s great Golden Age vision for Sony of Mozart’s spiritual awakening had been infused with the steel of the best of early 21st century musicological knowledge. In fact, this is the premiere recording of Mozart scholar David Black’s new 2013 edition of the completion of Mozart’s Requiem by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, using half the number of strings used in the 1793 formal premiere later that year and a standard vocal complement of eight singers, serving up what a small-forces version might have sounded like. And while John Butt points out in his excellent liner notes that “it would be natural […]