Mozart and his Requiem: a new recording

This week we going back to music I know, the first cd of this work I bought was way back in 1991 during the Two hundredth anniversary of one Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's  death in 1791 as part of a special budget price collection.

Time moves on, those recordings from the 1960's and 70's featured full orchestras and modern instruments that were unknown of in Mozart's own day so many have attempted to strip his music back to that with period instruments and so-called (and still controversial in some circles) Historically Informed Performance techniques.

Mozart's KV 626 Requiem was the last work he wrote and was not complete at the time of death and questions around how much of it really is Mozart's vision or how much is more completed in the style of have always been around not that as a music lover I get too hung up such things.

To me the question is more how satisfying the work turns out however it completed and in the case of a piece such as a requiem what it says to us as human beings about the nature of how we mark the death loved ones and those emotions.

If, like me you were brought up with catholicism, Roman Catholic or Anglo-Catholic via the Anglican Church much of this resonates most strongly.

For this performance Jordi Savall conducts Le Concert des Nations with La Capalle Nacional de Catalunya, keeping much of the richness in bringing to life the impassioned fervour of the Roman Catholic Faith and the hope of divine mercy for our sins that runs through the setting of the requiem sung in Latin with just twenty choristers.

It's not envisioned in this interpretation about clear outlines of the score with the work that was necessary that one may dissect and examine with an analytical mind when it come to the scoring, it is above all a felt experience.

And it works well.

Technically this cd by AltaVox of France is a Super Audio cd with a layer for regular cd players.