Mozart: Requiem (Reconstruction of First Performance)

Fate prevented Mozart from completing his setting of the Latin Requiem. He was working on the score at the time of his untimely death in 1791, leaving his student Franz Xaver Süssmayr to finish the job. John Butt rejects recent scholarly attempts to second guess Mozart’s intentions in favor of performing a revelatory new edition of Süssmayr’s version. The dramatic results, propelled by red-blooded choral singing and multicolored period instrument playing from the Dunedin Consort, taps into the emotional energy of Mozart’s music and channels it to enliven those passages attributed to Süssmayr. Butt’s tempos prove spot on throughout, as does the admirable artistry of his vocal soloists. The album closes with the stirring Misericordias Domini and a reconstruction of the Requiem as it might have been heard at Mozart’s funeral.