In this excellent disc
from Telerama, an exciting performance
of Mozart’s Requiem reveals an
intriguing gem of musical history. Many
will be aware of the mystery surrounding
Mozart's unfinished work, but fewer
will be aware of the fact that one solution
has come from Rio, in whose national
library was found the manuscript of
an added, concluding Libera Me
by the composer Sigismund Neukomm.
Neukomm was born in
Salzburg twenty two years after Mozart.
He appears not to have had any direct
contact with the older composer, despite
having a number of factors in common,
such as their friendship with Michael
Haydn, the fact that Neukomm was born
in a house opposite the Mozarts’, and
also that Constanze, Mozart’s wife,
sent her younger son, Franz Xaver Wolfgang
Mozart to Neukomm for harpsichord lessons.
Neukomm swiftly made his way up in the
world, with the friendship of such musical
luminaries as the Haydn brothers (he
did a great deal of arranging for Joseph
Haydn), not to mention Prince Talleyrand
of Paris, who introduced him to the
great and good and helped obtain commissions
and performances of Neukomm's work.
Travelling, a great interest of Neukomm’s,
was something he indulged in as much
as possible, yet it was as company for
the Comte de Luxembourg, on a diplomatic
mission to the court of Emperor João
VI, that he found himself journeying
to Rio.
That South America
underwent an extraordinary musical proliferation
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
is a fact that is becoming well-known,
and when Neukomm arrived he found, amongst
other fine musicians, one Nuñes
Garcia. Garcia was a founder of the
musical institution and concert promotion
organisation the Brotherhood of St Cecilia,
and he not only conducted performances
of the Mozart Requiem, but had
himself also composed a strikingly similar
requiem mass.
In 1819, nearly thirty
years after Mozart’s death, a performance
of the Requiem was given on the
feast of St Cecilia, in the church of
the Brotherhood of St Cecilia, in memory
of the musicians who had died that year.
It was conducted by Garcia. It is assumed
to be the one for which Neukomm wrote
the Libera me that was to complete
Mozart’s masterpiece. The only pieces
of evidence we have that might cause
us to question this is that in his review
of the concert, Neukomm doesn't mention
his own part in completing the work,
and also that when cataloguing his works
before he left to return to Paris, he
dated the Libera me 1821, raising
the possibility that he composed it
for a further performance.
Although the (usually
plainchant) Libera Me movement
is typically included as part of the
Absolution in a service of the mass
of the dead, it is not needed for a
Requiem concert performance or in an
anniversary mass commemorating one or
more dead. Neukomm’s addition is, of
course, in the style of Mozart, although
he had developed along with the times
so that, as Jean-Claude Malgoire, the
conductor of this performance, notes:
"when the Libera me is compared
to the other works of sacred music written
by Neukomm during his Brazilian period,
one realizes that he had to effect a
"mental flashback" here in order to
recreated the musical spirit prevalent
in Vienna and Salzburg at a time when
he was himself only a youthful pupil
of Michael Haydn!" Intriguingly, as
well as offering precise indications
of the tempo for his Libera Me,
Neukomm also includes some optional
extra instrumentation, with parts for
pairs of oboes, horns and flutes.
When Neukomm returned
to France, where he was to remain for
the rest of his life, the manuscript
was placed in the archives of the Church
of the Brotherhood of St. Cecilia in
Rio, where the performance had taken
place, before being taken to the national
library, where it has remained since.
As a recording made
at a live performance in a church, this
is rather reverberant, though not off-puttingly
so. It is surprisingly free from audience
noises - perhaps audiences behave better
in France than in the UK? The pace is
fast and the performance as a whole
exhilarating – listen to the urgency
in, for example, the Dies Irae.
Every element of this recording lends
itself to an extraordinarily dramatic
rendition of the work - the instruments
very accented, with a slightly jagged
and forceful quality. The brass in particular
is fairly raucous, harsh and almost
coarse. The sound is slightly rough
around the edges – instruments and voices
all a bit wild and impassioned rather
than smooth, resulting in an often menacing
air. The soloists are excellent – soprano
Hjordis Thebault has a pleasantly rich
and mature voice, yet a light tone,
whilst the tenor Simon Edwards comes
across as fairly tempestuous and fervent
– his voice almost histrionic – which
works extremely well in the context
of this particular version. In the powerful
Lacrymosa, grief is very tangible,
with the accented leaning phrases in
strings adding to the sense of anguish.
Yet despite the general emphasis on
drama and unrestrained emotions, beauty
also shines through – listen to the
lovely Sanctus, for example,
where the soloists work excellently
together to create a gorgeous sound.
This radiant and positive movement creates
a dramatic mood change when we reach
the deeply lugubrious opening of the
Agnus Dei. Neukomm’s Libera
Me is full of fire and grit, with
some parts of the text almost whispered
and others shouted out – very impressive
indeed. It blends in well with the rest
of the work, thus providing a satisfying
and unobtrusive conclusion to the Requiem.
On the whole, this
is quite a remarkable disc – to hear
an added Libera Me is fascinating,
and the performance itself is thrilling.
Such agitation, swift pace and almost
rowdy passion may not be to everyone’s
taste - and indeed, one drawback of
the prominence given to emotional weight
in this recording is that the words
are not always very clear – yet it is
an exciting and unusual version. For
me, the power easily makes up for lack
of refinement and smoothness in the
performance.
Em Marshall
Hjordis Thebault (soprano), Gemma Coma-Alabert
(mezzo), Simon Edwards (tenor), Alain
Buet (bass-baritone) 
