The Mozart Requiem: New Recordings, Perspectives

A familiar story regarding Mozart’s last days concerns the mysterious, gray-clad (masked as well, in one fanciful account) stranger who arrived on Mozart’s Vienna doorstep with a bag of money to commission a Requiem mass, with the proviso that the composer’s name not appear on the manuscript. Death himself, sending Mozart a none-too-subtle message?

As mundane truth would have it, the stranger was an emissary of a nobleman accustomed to passing off other people’s works as his own, a common practice of the time.

Mozart, harassed by conflicting deadlines and in failing health, accepted the commission but died before the task could be finished. He and, subsequently, his widow entrusted that job to his pupil and associate, Franz Xaver Sussmayr.

The Sussmayr edition has survived for at least two good reasons: It is unquestionably skillful and it completes a work to which Mozart’s own contributions, completed or in sketch form, display his genius at its most exalted. Then, too, those portions Sussmayr himself had to compose from (presumed) scratch are easily the best--perhaps the only--Sussmayr most of us have heard, although he was himself a prolific, successful and, like Mozart, short-lived composer.

But we live in an age of scholarly inquiry and are about to embark on a Mozart year. The validity and primacy of the Mozart-Sussmayr Requiem are therefore being questioned as never before, with other editions coming to the fore. Recordings serve as the testing ground.

Within one recent month, four new recordings of Mozart’s Requiem have reached us, and while two nominally employ Sussmayr’s edition, none of the four really resembles the others.

First, the Sussmayrs: The venerated Carlo Maria Giulini, directing London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, presents (on Sony Classical 45577) the sort of thickly textured, slow (in this instance, even slower), reverential Romanticization which has served audiences, if not Mozart, for most of the 20th Century. The only rewarding aspect of this otherwise sodden exercise is Lynne Dawson’s ethereal yet rich-toned execution of the soprano solos.

The Dutch conductor-scholar Ton Koopman traverses Mozart-Sussmayr, with what sounds like some orchestral touching-up, in 47 minutes, compared to Giulini’s full hour, without imparting a feeling of excessive haste (Erato 45472).

Koopman’s Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Netherlands Bach Choir--much smaller forces than Giulini employs--play and sing with consistent alertness, lift and skill. The light-voiced solo quartet, headed by soprano Barbara Schlick, produces an attractive sound individually and in ensemble.

Reasonable clarity of texture is achieved as well with what would seem to be the sizable forces of the London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra under a conductor previously unknown to this listener, Franz Welser-Most (EMI/Angel 2150, mid-price).

The edition used is by Franz Beyer, dating from 1971 and while based on Sussmayr, re-orchestrates some of the pupil’s work in what Beyer regards as a style closer to the master’s own. The changes are audible, but not of major consequence.

Welser-Most’s hearty, vibrant leadership represents a viable compromise between the quickness and intensity of the antiquarians and the loftiness of traditional interpretations. Of the soloists, bass Willard White leaves the most positive impression, booming his lines with impressive dignity.

H. C. Robbins Landon, among the most respected of living Haydn and Mozart scholars, recently produced his own edition of the Requiem, basing it on a re-evaluation of all available sources. Its first recording is by the Hanover Band and Chorus under Roy Goodman (Nimbus 5241).

Without necessarily being aware of Robbins Landon’s extensive revisions of the standard texts, listeners are still likely to miss some of the Requiem’s traditional thrills--whoever may have invented them--such as the trumpets-and-drums fury that ends the “Dies irae” and the orchestral grandeur of “Rex tremendae,” which sounds relatively piddly here.

But the edition, which may just require getting used to, isn’t the major problem. Rather, it’s that the performance is too often stiff and phlegmatic, the result perhaps of excessive caution toward what is in large part an untested entity.

The chorus and the solo quartet--Gundula Janowitz, Julia Bernheimer, Martyn Hill and David Thomas--are, ironically, among the most accomplished on recordings.

A final word: A notably successful combination of Sussmayr’s edition and stylish interpretation is that by the period forces under John Eliot Gardiner’s direction (Philips 420 197). It also contains the priceless bonus of Mozart’s rarely heard Kyrie in D minor, K. 341, which made such a stunning impression on audiences in its performance at the recent UCLA Baroque Mozart Festival.