Mozart: Requiem, K. 626 - Say: Mozart & Mevlana, Op. 110

Many recordings of Mozart’s Requiem take a trudging, over-reverential approach. Michael Sanderling and the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, however, take a different route. The opening movement’s sharply pointed rhythms lend a purposeful momentum, while the Kyrie fugue is urgently propulsive. The Dies Irae bristles with baleful intent, and Rex Tremendae boasts an operatic sense of drama. The four vocal soloists are eloquent, but it’s the outstanding Berlin Radio Choir which truly impresses. They inflect the Latin words with precision and intelligence, and bring a focused intensity to all their contributions. The coupling, Fazil Say’s Mozart & Mevlana, was specifically written as a contemporary response to Mozart's Requiem. Setting two poems by the 13th-century Sufi mystic Rumi, Say weaves strands of Mozart’s music together with his own elaborations. Instruments from Say’s native Türkiye add novel textures to the orchestration, an east-west fusion where stylistic communalities are often strikingly evident.