Customer Reviews

Mozart: Requiem Mass K.626

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It's extremely difficult to choose between the large battery of Mozart's Requiem recordings available. Other works has it's unbeatable version. For example, the work done by Jeremy Summerly and the Oxford Camerata (Naxos label) on Faure's Requiem is undoubtely perfect and light years from any other recording. This doesn't happen here.

When I decided to find the perfect Mozart's Requiem I noticed that there were about 20 good versions of this work and the last weeks I've become half crazy to compare them all. I've recently finished this odyssey and this is what I have concluded:

Marriner has two versions (first with Cotrubas and later with McNair as sopranos), of which the last one has the most favorable critics. In my opinion, the first one (reviewd here) is much better.

The Marriner/Cotrubas recording is based upon the edition by Franz Beyer, which corrects obvious mistakes, rewrites some of the trombone parts and slightly extends the Sanctus (Hossana fugue) section, which are so short in Sussmayr's edition sounding abrupt and largely unconvincing.

It was recorded in 1977 and perfectly remastered in 1987, so it's an ADD recording. The sound all over the entire record is full and clear so you can easily follow the lyrics. The orchestra does a good work and the chorus is fantastic, the vocal soloist are real good (but not espectacular). The full recording has an equilibrated and extremely high level of quality on all tracks, it's perfectly precise on the entries of the different orchestra and chorus sections, and each section sounds as a single person because of their always perfect intonation, without a miss in pitch. The Dies Irae is by far the best ever recorded, it sounds like if the whole sky was going to fall over your head, it's powerful as a thunder. The worst in this version is the Kyrie which is a bit slow (but not as slow as in Bohm's version).

The Marriner/McNair version is obscure and bassy, full of echoes, you can't pay attention to the chorus lyrics because they are almost unintelligible. The full recording is some kind mediocre except for the Kyrie which at least is played at the correct tempo. I'm not saying that Marriner/McNair is a bad version, is a correct version, but, when fighting against the masters, to be correct it's not enough to be the best.

Better than Marriner/McNair is the Gardiner's version, which I think is the second best after Marriner/Cotrubas. It has the correct tempos all over the Requiem and the sound is clear, but some times could be a bit weak and the vocals in the Tuba Mirum sounds like if Willard White (the bass-baritone soloist) was singing from the bathroom of the concert hall.

Sir Georg Solti recorded a live one which is very good, but it was recorded as a real funeral ceremony and there is a priest speaking "solo" from time to time which breaks the action and turns down the full experience like a "coitus interruptus".

Karajan recorded three versions, of which the only one that worths a listen is the second one, recorded with the Berliner Philarmoniker in 1975. In this version the orchestra takes the first place in importance and leads the chorus. If you listen to the Kyrie you'll hear that the fugue is conducted by a violin which sounds amazingly as the leader of the chorus. The rest of the work is real good but, again, the sound is far from perfection because of the echoes in the recording hall. Also, this is a some kind unorthodox performance because of Karajan's romantic approach to the score. Bernstein's version is similar to the Karajan's one, but without the orchestra leadership shown in Karajan's.

The one conducted by Karl Bohm is a very powerful performance, but it's such incredibly slow on tempo that ruins the full score. In Bohm's recording the confutatis sounds like an adagio and the Kyrie is the most static fugue ever seen (or listened).

Harnoncourt has recorded a horrible version, the worse I've ever listened, the only acceptable in his recording is the engineering sound quality.

Summing up, the Marriner/Cotrubas version is not perfect (most because of the Kyrie's slow tempo), but it's the best available, not being too far in quality from Gardiner, Solti or Karajan's (Berliner Philarmoniker, 1975) recordings.

I found this recording to be a disappointment because, musically speaking, Marriner and company turn in a fully competent performance that does not manage to go anywhere. We all know the quality and occasional insight to the works of Mozart that Marriner is capable of bringing (witness the delights to be had in any of the symphony or piano concerto recordings), but here the effort falls short.

As a listener, I am not interested in textual authenticity, nor am I going to fuss about sonic conditions, and finally I am not at all concerned about any of the pretensions on display in the growing number of original instrument readings, and so I simply found that Marriner dishes up a far too plain and unspiritual Requiem. Yes, all else about it is clarity and competence, but insight and humanity were nowhere to be found.

By way of comparison with Marriner's surface virtues, I am now listening to the old Jascha Horenstein/Vienna Symphony (Vox) recording and find a greater musical resonance in its more ragged and unpolished approach.

If performances that invoked `Dresden China', were the most insidious threat to Mozart earlier in the Twentieth Century, I wonder whether a more sinister peril arose with the film Amadeus: namely, undue reverence towards the composer, hence the Complete Mozart Edition, the "Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters" Festival that was M22 and other follies. Sir Neville Marriner and the ASMF contributed materially to the film. I wonder whether such participation militated their subsequent endeavours in this domain - and subtly at that.

For instance, take their performance of the Requiem from 1991 Mozart: Requiem. It is well regarded and perhaps I heard it on an off day, but to my mind, it is almost scared of itself as a performance: it has to do everything right. Moreover, there seems to be a direct correlation between what the `Amadeus-conscious' audience wants and what is forthcoming from the conductor. Nor was success fully attendant upon Sir Neville's second survey of the symphonies and other concertante works that post-date the film. They are all listenable but lacking in earthiness and genuine fire.

My surprise was all the greater when I came across this earlier performance from 1977. It is gutsy - there's no other word for it. If blindfolded, I would be at a loss to ascribe it to anyone in particular; Sir Neville would be the last person to come to mind. And like all great performances of the Requiem, it is elegiac in thrust.

The Chorus Master on this occasion was Laszlo Heltay - a fine musician - and he sparks an incendiary response from the chorus. I am always prepared to listen to anything that has Ileana Cotrubas in it and she sings lustrously as usual. Helen Watts is a formidable contralto and her Latin diction is exemplary: if Thomas of Celano were listening on, he would applaud. Their male counterparts are fine enough. The soloists are masterfully coiled around one another in the Recordare like the Serpentine Column in the Hippodrome of Constantinople.

I am not saying this is the definitive recording - after all, what is? - but it is admirable. Remaster it and a fifth star would materialise. BTW, the Bayer edition is used. There are minor changes to the Tuba Mirum, the Lacrymosa, the Sanctus, Benedictus and the Agnus Dei. They are not material.

In short, you could do a lot worse than this. More fool me: I didn't think that Sir Neville was capable of such trenchant ferocity. There you go.