Simply Marvelous: It has made me a convert to the piece!
J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 05/09/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"You may want to reject my review as being relatively uninformed because I have been, in the past, completely averse to the Mozart Requiem. I can't explain that except to recall that my first exposure to the work was from a recording of the old bloated, 100-voice choir and full orchestra sort. It put me off the thing. I am ashamed to admit that I have gone through life thinking I didn't like the work -- in spite of being a real lover of Mozart's music in general -- and I had never owned another recording of it nor sought out a live performance of it. I have been castigated by fellow music-lovers as being a philistine. So be it.
But the wonderful thing is that this recording -- which I acquired almost by chance -- has made a believer of me. I cannot enter into the musicological pros and cons of Sussmayer's completion; it all sounds like Mozart to me. But the best thing is that this performance is fleet, clean, bright and shiny with a simply marvelous chamber chorus (the Gewandhaus Kammerchor) and a chamber orchestra drawn from players in the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra. The chorus's ability to sing the tricky, fast contrapuntal lines is astonishing. They are abetted by an orchestral accompaniment that uses the best of the performance-practice gestures learned from the HIP crowd. The soloists are each quite fine even though I'd never heard of any of them. (I particularly like the bass, Martin Snell.) Conductor Morten Schuldt-Jensen, a Danish choral specialist, shapes the music with loving care but without self-indulgent swooning.
The first two tracks, before the Requiem, are two offertory choruses I'd never heard before. Each is very impressive, especially 'Inter natos mulierum' with its unusual scoring for choir, strings, organ and three trombones.
So, if you're in the market for a budget-priced Mozart Requiem this is possibly the one for you. It certainly sold me.
Scott Morrison"
Highly musical performance of the Mozart Requiem
Carl S. Hagelin | River Edge, NJ United States | 11/10/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The lean, early instrumental texture is matched by a clean choral performance rich with fitting yet bold phrasing. My ears picked up in the first four bars."
Pure Mozart Requiem
Thumper | 06/12/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I always love Mozart Requiem, have several recordings such as Marriner's, Bernstein's, Jochum's, Celibidache's and Karajan's. I like Jochum's most, but still wonder if I could find some different version which I would like. Occasionally I listened to this recording. Simply amazing and I felt at once that is the one which I am searching for. As Scott Morrison said, a lot of others are with 100-voice choir and full orchestra, playing with some sort of heavy philosophy or strong feeling, this is just a pure Mozart Requiem."
