Comparison recordings
Harnoncourt, Yakar, Wenkel, Equiluz,
Holl, Concentus Musicus (Süßmayr
version) [ADD] Teldec 2292 42911-2
Hogwood, Academy of Ancient Music (Maunder
edition) L’Oiseau-Lyre 411 712-2
Labadie, La Chapelle de Québec,
Les Violons du Roi, (Levin edition)
HDCD*** Dorian DOR 90310
Davis’s performance
is heartfelt and deeply emotional, but
not slow. He keeps a good modern tempo
going and achieves great clarity. The
soloists are excellent, individually,
and in ensemble. The chorus sounds very,
very good. I’ve sung this work* so I
know what I’m talking about. As with
many German choirs, the tenor section
is very capable and hence is able to
give the work the correct balance of
sound. A chorus with weak tenors is
like an orchestra with a weak brass
section, and recent scholarship shows
that Mozart was much more enamoured
of brass sound that previously thought,
that trumpets should be more forward
in his symphonies and, perhaps even
more important, in his piano concertos.
Recent scholarship
now seems to be favouring the Süßmayr
edition again. Although Bruno Walter
could at one time long ago say "there
is not one note of Mozart in the ‘Sanctus,’"
Harnoncourt points out that comparison
of those parts of the Requiem
Süßmayr is credited with
wholly composing, with Süßmayr’s
other music, shows that Mozart/Süßmayr
is of substantially higher quality than
Süßmayr alone. Hence we may
be justified in assuming that Süßmayr
worked from sketches or even verbal
communications from the dying Mozart,
and so Harnoncourt performs the Süßmayr
version, albeit with revised orchestration
and on original instruments. In any
event, the Maunder edition simply leaves
out the Süßmayr contributions
while adding a fugue by Maunder. More
satisfactory is the Levin edition which
repairs Süßmayr by trying
to read through the resulting music
to reconstruct Mozart’s lost sketches,
but ultimately leaves in most of the
Süßmayr, albeit re-orchestrated.
Levin also reworked the "Amen"
and "Hosanna" fugues to make
them more in Mozart’s style and remove
facile modernisms presumably added by
Süßmayr. If you want an alternative
version of the Requiem to go
with your Süßmayr version,
the Labadie recording of the Levin arrangement
is a good one to buy for scholarship,
musicianship and sound.
Another argument favouring
the Süßmayr contributions
is that if Mozart had actually left
no advice or sketches as to how he wanted
the Requiem completed, the natural
thing for Süßmayr to do would
have been to orchestrate and adapt other
completed music by Mozart** rather than
try to "fake it". But the
Requiem is, for better or worse,
all original music.
And, the Süßmayr
version is the one we all have known
and loved, and heard performed many
times by the greatest of artists. It
has its own performance history, and
this performance can proudly stand with
the very best of them.
Note that the sound
is not compressed AC-3, but is 48/16
PCM, actually superior to CD quality;
this is an uncompressed DVD-Audio with
video track. Consequently the chorus,
particularly the sopranos and tenors,
are clearer and cleaner in sound than
with either AC-3 or CD. The two channel
sound decodes nicely in your surround-sound
decoder. Video quality is quite good
but not brilliantly sharp. Video direction
is generally good, but perhaps there
are too many close-ups. I don’t see
how watching drops of sweat running
slowly all the way down the singers’
faces helps one to get the feeling of
the music.
*At an early rehearsal
of the Burbank (Los Angeles County,
California, USA) Civic Chorale (in church!),
as the altos declaimed cuncta stricte
somebody in the baritone section un-helpfully
mistranslated "tight pussy"
and waves of snickers reverberated throughout
the chorus. Fortunately by performance
night the joke was so old nobody laughed.
**This, of course,
could have been what was done and the
original sources destroyed; if so this
only bolsters further the claims of
the Süßmayr version.
***That, of course,
is now MICROSOFT HDCD™.
Windows Media Player version 9, running
under Windows XP, will play HDCDs with
superior audio quality; any CD player
will play them with normal CD quality.
Paul Shoemaker
An excellent traditional
video version in superior sound. ...
see Full Review
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Sir
Colin Davis. 
ARTHAUS
MUSIK RM ARTS 100449 [60.00]
