Post by erik on Jan 6, 2024 18:22:51 GMT -5
In this first edition of the Classical Albums Spotlight, I will look at a recording of one of the most important, and mysterious, works ever composed in the choral genre, one which remained incomplete at the time of the composer's passing--Mozart's Requiem.
Mozart: REQUIEM IN D MINOR, K. 626
Soprano: DAME MARGARET PRICE
Mezzo-Soprano: TRUDELIESE SCHMIDT
Tenor: FRANCISCO ARAIZA
Bass: THEO ADAM
Leipzig Radio Chorus
Dresden State Orchestra/PETER SCHREIER (Philips)
Very few works in Western classical music are as shrouded in mystery as the D Minor Requiem of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. By far one of the most popular of all choral works, the work was commissioned of Mozart by one Count Franz von Walsegg for a requiem service intended to take place on February 14, 1792. The only trouble was that this mysterious Count had had a history of commissioning works of other composers and then passing them off as his own composition; and he had intended to do the same with Mozart’s Requiem. But on December 5, 1791, that Count’s plans were thwarted when Mozart himself died, less than two months before his 36th birthday; and the Requiem, though sketched out and orchestrated in a fair amount of places, was still not complete just yet. A student of Mozart’s, Franz Xaver Sussmayr, who was there to witness the composer working feverishly on what he believed to be his own Requiem, was given the opportunity by Mozart’s widow Costanze to finish it; and even with the work shrouded in controversy as to who actually wrote which parts (the final “Lux Aeterna” borrows music from the work’s “Introitus” and “Kyrie”), and the attempts of so-called “musicologists” to “complete” a work that Sussmayr had allegedly sullied, this great final work of Mozart’s still has the power that all great works of art do. Much of the mystery surrounding the work can be found in British playwright Peter Shaffer’s play (and subsequent movie) Amadeus, which equated Mozart’s death with the extreme and perhaps even homicidal jealousy of Antonio Salieri (who was in fact a sizeable rival of Mozart’s in late 18th century Vienna, but who was still crestfallen at his younger contemporary’s death, and in no way responsible for it).
Of the hundreds of recordings of this great masterwork of sacred/choral music, it is the recording made in April 1982 by the Staatskapelle Dresden (Dresden State Orchestra) under the direction of legendary tenor-turned-conductor Peter Schreier that captures the solemnity of what Mozart was striving to achieve before death intervened so tragically at such a young age. With a great quartet of vocal soloists and the Leipzig Radio Chorus to go along with an orchestra so vividly familiar with the music of the wunderkind from Salzburg, this is the Mozart Requiem recording that I recommend.
Mozart: REQUIEM IN D MINOR, K. 626
Soprano: DAME MARGARET PRICE
Mezzo-Soprano: TRUDELIESE SCHMIDT
Tenor: FRANCISCO ARAIZA
Bass: THEO ADAM
Leipzig Radio Chorus
Dresden State Orchestra/PETER SCHREIER (Philips)
Very few works in Western classical music are as shrouded in mystery as the D Minor Requiem of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. By far one of the most popular of all choral works, the work was commissioned of Mozart by one Count Franz von Walsegg for a requiem service intended to take place on February 14, 1792. The only trouble was that this mysterious Count had had a history of commissioning works of other composers and then passing them off as his own composition; and he had intended to do the same with Mozart’s Requiem. But on December 5, 1791, that Count’s plans were thwarted when Mozart himself died, less than two months before his 36th birthday; and the Requiem, though sketched out and orchestrated in a fair amount of places, was still not complete just yet. A student of Mozart’s, Franz Xaver Sussmayr, who was there to witness the composer working feverishly on what he believed to be his own Requiem, was given the opportunity by Mozart’s widow Costanze to finish it; and even with the work shrouded in controversy as to who actually wrote which parts (the final “Lux Aeterna” borrows music from the work’s “Introitus” and “Kyrie”), and the attempts of so-called “musicologists” to “complete” a work that Sussmayr had allegedly sullied, this great final work of Mozart’s still has the power that all great works of art do. Much of the mystery surrounding the work can be found in British playwright Peter Shaffer’s play (and subsequent movie) Amadeus, which equated Mozart’s death with the extreme and perhaps even homicidal jealousy of Antonio Salieri (who was in fact a sizeable rival of Mozart’s in late 18th century Vienna, but who was still crestfallen at his younger contemporary’s death, and in no way responsible for it).
Of the hundreds of recordings of this great masterwork of sacred/choral music, it is the recording made in April 1982 by the Staatskapelle Dresden (Dresden State Orchestra) under the direction of legendary tenor-turned-conductor Peter Schreier that captures the solemnity of what Mozart was striving to achieve before death intervened so tragically at such a young age. With a great quartet of vocal soloists and the Leipzig Radio Chorus to go along with an orchestra so vividly familiar with the music of the wunderkind from Salzburg, this is the Mozart Requiem recording that I recommend.