Requiem: Mozart's Death in Words and Music

Numerous recordings have been made of Mozart’s Requiem, but this one is different. Conductor Manfred Honeck frames the movements Mozart completed before his death in 1791 with a variety of other material, contextualising the composer’s Catholic faith and his thoughts on death. Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music (Maurerische Trauermusik) is included, as are the beatific “Laudate Dominum” (from the Vesperae solennes de confessore) and the beautiful motet Ave verum corpus. Funeral bells, poetry and snatches of Gregorian chant are also incorporated, as are visionary extracts from the Book of Revelation, read by actor F. Murray Abraham (Salieri in Miloš Forman’s 1984 movie Amadeus). Omitting the movements added by Süssmayr after Mozart’s death (Süssmayr’s version of the Requiem being the most usually performed), Honeck directs an emotionally hard-hitting performance, fearsome in the dramatic “Dies irae” and intensely turbulent in the “Confutatis”. He has a solid team of soloists, and the outstanding Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and The Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh are unfailingly responsive to the forensic detail of Honeck’s gripping interpretation.