Mozart: Requiem (ed. Süssmayr)
Heather Harper
(soprano)
Alfreda Hodgson (mezzo-soprano)
Peter Pears (tenor)
John
Shirley-Quirk (bass)
Aldeburgh Festival Chorus
English Chamber
Orchestra
Benjamin Britten (conductor)
BBC Legends
Mozart:
Requiem (ed. Levin)
Adagio and Fugue, K.
546
Susan Gritton (soprano)
Catherine Wyn-Rogers
(mezzo-soprano)
Timothy Robinson (tenor)
Peter Rose (bass)
Scottish
Chamber Orchestra and Chorus
Charles Mackerras (conductor)
Linn Records
With all the activity that Mozart's
Requiem has inspired and continues to inspire, among performers and scholars
alike, one could make the case that the
best thing that ever happened to the piece was its having been left
unfinished. All the different editions of the score — from the commonly performed completion
by Mozart's pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr to the ostensibly pure-Mozart-only 1981 version
by Richard Maunder to the innovative best-of-both-worlds 1996 version by
musicologist-cum-keyboard virtuoso Robert Levin — make the Requiem far more ripe for reinvention than
are more conventionally established masterpieces.
This is reflected in the two wholly different experiences delivered by these two discs. Composer/conductor Benjamin Britten not only touched up the usual Süssmayr edition for the 1971 performance recorded here by the BBC, but, more significantly, he also uses the piece as a vehicle for confessional outpourings that he never allowed himself in his own works. Using Levin's anti-Süssmayr edition, Charles Mackerras tries (even more than most "historically informed" interpreters) to divorce his interpretation from all the Gothic Romanticism that has grown up around this work. Even amid the Requiem's exhaustive representation in the catalogue, both these discs are welcome — particularly now that so many older recordings seem, conceptually speaking, to have gotten the piece wrong.
Since the Requiem is the single most forward-looking piece in Mozart's output — and since, as a masterpiece left unfinished by a dying composer, it was so appealing to the Romantic mindset — it has inspired a Romantic-era performance practice that has often abandoned common sense altogether when it comes to size. You'd expect a fill-the-cathedral-with-sound approach from the piece's first-ever recording, a 1941 reading by the Berlin Philharmonic and the Bruno Kittel Choir conducted by Kittel himself. But even the normally elegant Karl Böhm favored a big, woolly sonority for this score, a sound that seemed at odds with the music itself even in the relatively unenlightened 1970s. Indeed, few Mozart works have benefited as much as the Requiem from the recordings to come out of the "historically informed performance" movement. Nearly all of those recordings offer revelations of one kind or another — revelations that, intentionally or not, Mackerras has consolidated.
His is one of the cleanest recordings ever (though not to the
antiseptic extremes of John Eliot Gardiner, who practically makes the piece smell like
rubbing alcohol). Mackerras' tempos definitely move, but they never rush, and he
always resists the temptation to belabor the existential depths of
Mozart's operatic word-setting. Remove that bit of tradition and the vocal writing
becomes, for its time, surprisingly retro — the Kyrie's melismatic
passagework, for example, looks back to Handel. Besides making so much sense,
the approach is refreshingly musical.
While some interpreters more or less give up on the piece as Mozart's contribution is overtaken by Süssmayr's, Mackerras clearly believes that a genuinely cohesive performance is possible with Levin's version (which maintains more of Süssmayr's work than other modern editions such as Maunder's). Though the prominence of Süssmayr's trombone in the "Tuba mirum" has been mildly controversial in some circles, Mackerras treats the instrument as an iconographic symbol of sorts — the sound of Judgment Day, perhaps — whose presence slowly insinuates itself almost from the beginning and then chillingly comes to the foreground. Even the musically thinner sections of the Requiem are treated to a special grace and lyricism by Mackerras, whose tight overall pacing makes the piece seem less uneven in inspiration than usual. The "Amen" fugue — an outstanding feature of the Levin edition not found in Süssmayr — has never had a more convincing reading than it gets here. I'm not sure how well it fits next to the "Lacrimosa," but then, very few performances have simultaneously captured that movement's equal debts to Bach and Baroque dance.
Mackerras's vocal quartet is the most consistently compatible on disc, and their solo passages reflect deep thought about both the meaning of the text and the emotional temperature Mozart gives it in his word settings. Never do any of the musicians sound drilled; their sense of ensemble is the most natural thing in the world. The sound quality has a churchy glow, yet it's never wanting for clarity. You'd never know that this near-perfect recording comes from such an imperfect world as ours.
For all its strengths, however, the disc doesn't exactly displace other Levin-edition recordings. Those not wholly comfortable with the extent to which Mackerras has traveled down the historically informed path will find a happy medium with Bernard Labadie, La Chapelle de Quebec and Les Violons du Roy on Dorian. That performance is, in any case, a uniquely charged experience, having been recorded only ten days after 11 September 2001 in the acoustical Parnassus of the Troy Savings Bank Auditorium in upstate New York.
And now, for the other end of the spectrum.
Britten's performance takes the Requiem's existential terror to an extreme that I've imagined but never heard.
His means of doing so, however, is intense to the point of being
horrifying. The Aldeburgh Festival Chorus makes mighty sounds, and as if to keep
up, the starry quartet of soloists badly oversings, often to the point of not
sounding like their usual selves. Their lack of reserve makes a powerful impression, as
if they're in the heat of trying to comprehend and to convey an emotional and
spiritual level of being far above themselves (an approach more often heard in
Beethoven's Missa Solemnis).
Britten takes a lot of his interpretive cues from the accompanying figures in the orchestra, finding in them a particularly strong emotional underpinning (especially in the "Lacrimosa") for the dramatic impact of Mozart's word settings. But I was baffled by Britten's quick, rhythmically severe tempo in the "Rex tremendae," and in the later, Süssmayr-dominated movements, Britten maintains a sense of drama, but it's a synthetic, generalized one. That might have sustained a listener's interest in the concert hall, but it becomes relentless on disc, especially by the time you hit the Sanctus and Agnus Dei.
The 1971 concert recording, made at the Aldeburgh Festival, has a close microphone perspective that renders the sound picture somewhat congested. In addition, I tried, out of fairness to hardworking organists I've known, not to resent the piercing organ sonority poking out of the piece's overall texture — but I lost that battle.
As always in such recorded documents, lack of polish must be forgiven. Performances as impassioned as this one
survive best in one's memory from a live encounter; maybe that's why,
amid so many live recordings of Britten-conducted concerts to be
released over the past ten years, this was one slow to appear on the
market. Still, I'm glad it's here even if I don't hear it again: its viewpoint is
so singular that even having experienced it once is deeply
valuable.
