Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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191 of 198 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful listening, 11 Mar 2002
Mozart's Requiem has to be one his most famous pieces, and this recording does it many favours. The "Confutatis" is renowned as the most visual movement, and the Gächinger Kantorei and Bach-Collegium Stuttgart play with such passion, the emotions and visions of hell mustered up are clear in all senses. If anyone has ever seen the film Amadeus, the pictures from the film are instantly remembered as the orchestra plays the music written by Mozart to his death, resulting in his death. The soloists and chorus are as equally sensitive as they are passionate and harsh. The orchestra accompanying to perfection adding emotion, both destructive and eerie, especially in the "Dies Irae", with repetitive flourishes in the strings and the wind keeping the melodies continuing. The professionalism and musicality of the performers is showed off with much delight in the "Tuba Mirum" with the four soloists appearing together for the first time, the string sections beautifully adding texture to the entire structure. The angelic woodwind in the Recordare, sustained above pulsing strings paves the way for the gentle appearance of the soloists leading onto angrier melodies. As mentioned, the Confutatis is by far the most passionate, but followed by the spooky Lacrimosa, performed with such sensitivity, the true despair of a pressured composer is not only felt but also shared. The control of conductor Helmuth Rilling is clearly evident in the variation of dynamics and emotion expressed by both orchestra and chorus in Domine Jesu, with precise expertise being expressed in the fugal section by the soloists. The final part, Communio - Lax Aeterna, combines the passion, expertise, and tranquillity of orchestra, chorus and soloists in an amalgamation of praise to god through prayer and through music, interdependent of each other in this glorious gratefulness of life.The "Exultate, jubilate", written for Europe's most celebrated castrato singer when Mozart was just 16 years of age, is one of his most acclaimed shorter vocal settings. The Alleluia concluding this wonderfully performed piece allows such a grand virtuoso performance from soloist. The co-ordination between woodwind and strings is not only evident but nearing perfection throughout all three movements. All in all a very easy CD to listen to, empowering all the emotions from joy, celebration and praise through to destruction, demise and visions of hell. Five out of Five!!!
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A mixed bag - some excellent playing with some slightly dubious singing..., 21 Oct 2008
Where to start? It seems sensible to review both the work itself and this performance of it here, although the score I have given it relates only to the performance.
The work itself is a masterpiece. As you probably know, Mozart left this unfinished when he died, and it was completed by Franz Sussmayr, supposedly to Mozart's plan. However, the work certainly flows as a whole, and all of the individual sections work well. The highlights of the piece are, unsurprisingly for Mozart, the cannons and fugal passages, perhaps most notably in the Domine Jesu and Kyrie. Mozart was a master of weaving lines together to create complex polyphony which is simultaneously exciting, melodic and jaw-dropping. His greatest skill was to create melodies which are seemingly awkward and yet sound fantastic, again see the Domine Jesu (ne absorbe... with major 7th leaps).
Some of the individual parts are slightly less impressive for me, the Rex Tremendae is a little melodramatic yet not especially interesting. For first-time listeners, there are some really surprising moments harmonically, particularly at the end of the Kyrie, with a dominant chord at the end which is built up to for several bars, and then, instead of resolving to the tonic, goes to a shocking diminished chord on the flat 5th, which is simply stunning.
To sum up, the work is interesting, complex, and also highly emotional. It is, after all, a requiem, and there are some highly passionate moments of intense sorrow. A jem, and everyone should have a copy of it!
Moving on to the performance, it's mostly downhill for me, with the exception of the instrumental playing, which is truly fantastic. Accurate, and yet far from cold. There is real emotion in the performances, and this makes for a dramatic rendition, with everything you could want from the orchestra.
It must be said, the singing is technically accurate throughout, and the chorus and most of the soloists are good, without doubt. My main gripe, and it may seem trivial to some, is with the latin pronunciation. As one who has sung in this requiem, and several others, there are some points of pronunciation which seem completely bizarre to me. Unless there has been a recent revision in latin pronunciation of the time of which I am unaware, 'semini' and 'ejus' are pronounced with an open 'eh' not an 'eee'. I may be completely wrong in this, but it grates my ears to hear 'seeemini eeejus', I cannot fathom this, and I struggle to listen to some sections without laughing!
My second criticism is of the tempi. These aren't poor all the way through by any means, but the first movement in particular is, to my ears, excessively slow. There are other occassions in the work where I feel that the tempo is a little on the slow or fast side, but evidently that is personal opinion.
Finally, I feel I must comment on the bombast of solo tenor Siegfried Jerusalem. In general I feel the soloists are of a high standard, as is essential for a performance of such a work. However, Jerusalem is, for me, excessively emotional, bombastic and loud. He also swoops a lot between notes, and this criticism is not reserved exclusively for Jerusalem, all the soloists seem to suffer from this, perhaps it's a period performance touch.
All in all, it's a bargain to get such a great work at this price, and if you aren't as much of a pedant as me then the performances are very good. If the scoring were out of 10 it would be a 7! Recommended, but if you're willing to pay more I'm sure you could get a better recording.
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~ Nicholas Gedge
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~ Robert Lloyd
~ Maurice Durufle
~ Johann Sebastian Bach
~ Giuseppe Verdi
