Raphaël Pichon’s new take on Mozart’s Requiem isn’t just novel. It’s a revelation. The first thing we hear, a pure boy treble voice intoning the plainchant In Paradisum, is cut short abruptly by a bracing four-voice canon. It’s not what we are expecting! This isn’t perhaps a shock, considering the source: since they were founded, Pichon and his Pygmalion ensemble have had success enlivening their repertoire with radical innovations in presentation. These have ranged from multimedia performances to fresh revisions or restructurings of the works themselves. They bring that approach to new heights with this Requiem. I think it may be the finest recording of the work ever.
The interpolations here are so striking and effective, start to finish, that I’m tempted to spend more time describing them than I should. But for all the fresh beauty and insight they bring to this so-familiar masterpiece of choral repertoire, it’s ultimately the brilliant performance of the original core movements of Mozart’s score that remain as the lasting impression I take away from each listening, and will surely bring me back time and again.
The Pygmalion choir and orchestra sound magnificent, as you might expect. The period instruments of the ensemble bring incisive clarity to every nuance of the score. The strings sound urgent, dramatic, delicate, plaintive – turning on a dime in response to the emotional and dramatic nuances of Pichon’s leadership. Woodwinds and brass are all solid and nicely balanced throughout, with oboes and clarinets bringing character to their occasional prominent solo turns.
The soloists are uniformly excellent: Ying Fang’s warm soprano, Beth Taylor’s rich mezzo, Laurence Kilsby’s refined tenor, and Alex Rosen’s resonant bass… they form an ideally balanced quartet. And Chadi Lazreq’s treble voice carries purity and innocence that speaks with emotional weight in the midst of grandeur and grief.
More central to the power of this recording is how these forces respond so immediately and engagingly to Pichon’s idiosyncratic interpretation of the whole. You will hear his ear for detail everywhere. He takes care to shape individual phrases and melodic motifs, as much as whole sections and movements. Several numbers unfold at unusual tempos that may surprise by comparison with other favoured interpretations. But he always makes a compelling case. In the already pacey Tuba mirum, his emphatic acceleration as the bass hands off to the tenor’s “mors stupebit” solo (“when all creation rises again”) is unconventional, but sounds so right and brings a new passion to the fore. For the Hostias, he opens at a relaxed tempo that establishes a plaintively prayerful tone, and it sets up a sharp emotional break into the assertive “Quam olim Abrahae” (“as promised”) that follows.
This is a thrilling performance by any standard. But what of the much-discussed “re-composition” of the whole work?
First thing to note is that Mozart’s Requiem is famously an “unfinished” composition. Historically, it is most familiar in the post-mortem completion by Mozart’s contemporary, Franz Xaver Süssmayr. That version is generally viewed as seriously flawed, and many more recent scholarly re-creations and recorded performances have sought to do better.
Pichon’s extensive program note in this package dives deep into the pros and cons of various approaches. A brief summary of his thinking is that he chooses to maintain Süssmayr’s version for its iconic status, but to create an improved narrative drama by weaving in earlier pieces and snippets by Mozart, as well as liturgical plainchants.
He describes his new version as a biographical journey. It reframes his version of the Requiem as a dialogue between life and death, between Mozart’s evolving musical self and the composer whose life’s work ended so suddenly. It’s a deeply moving meditation on mortality and Mozart’s enduring legacy.
The interpolations act as dramatic, emotional and temporal bridges. The In Paradisum plainchant that opens the performance is abruptly interrupted by an early Mozart canon for voices Ach zu kurz ist unsers Lebenslauf. This is a striking moment of pure stagecraft, with musical consquences: it casts the famous opening movements of the Requiem proper in a whole new light. We hear the familiar Introit and Kyrie, and then another daring interruption: the 19 year-old Mozart’s sacred motet Ne pulvis et cinis, creating a dramatic lead-in to the Dies irae.
Perhaps the most jarring addition comes in the Lacrimosa – hushed and awe-struck, ending with Süssmayr’s completing ‘Amen’)… followed instantly by the ‘Amen’ sketch that Mozart himself had sketched for this movement but never finished. We are left to wonder what might have been. Jarring yes, but poignant and thought-provoking. You must stay to the end, as the treble In Paradisum a capella plainchant returns as the spine-chilling completion of this fully satisfying re-creation of the Requiem.
It takes penetrating insight into the essence of the music to carry off twists and turns like this in such familiar repertoire, both in the modifications of the work and in the mercurial shaping of the performance. But Pichon absolutely makes it work! I never felt that I was hearing interpretative gimmicks or showy effects. There’s a theatrical energy here that never tips into artifice. And I do feel that I will hear the Requiem with different ears from now on.
Highly recommended, and probably the best choral recording of the year.
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