I found another recording of the Mozart Requiem that I haven't listened to yet in a DG box set I've been picking discs from for months (one of the DG111 50+ CD ones).
I normally enjoy Karl Bohm's Mozart, although always with the awareness that it captures some of the music's qualities at the expense of others. Beauty of melodic line and a careful sense of shape are always features of Bohm's conducting, but he can be a bit leaden in his choice of tempi and the rather heavy orchestral forces can obscure textural and structural details, both harmonic and formal.
This Requiem takes the worst features of Bohm's Mozart conducting to excess. There is some beautiful singing from the choir and some beautiful playing from the ranks of the Vienna Phil, but there is a real lack of vigour and it sounds a bit like a Requiem trampling through thick mud in places. There is very little rhythmic precision and although the DG recording allows a fair amount of choral and orchestral detail to come through, the overall impression is of old fashioned, bloated performance approaches.
My go-to recording of the Requiem, by Daniel Barenboim on EMI, has so much more attack where needed, so that the spiritual depth and beauty of, for example, the 'Hostias' is even more marked. Despite the larger than ideal forces, Barenboim and his forces are generally far more sensitive to the textures than in the Bohm recording, although Phillipe Herreweghe's recording brings this even more into focus with the more appropriate orchestra and choir.
Still, I think I'd rather have Bohm than Franz Welser-Most, whose EMI recording does absolutely nothing for me.
I can't wait to hear the impending recording by John Butt on Linn, of which there is a tantalising extract on the Gramophone Player at present. It sounds as though that should really bring Mozart's wonderful Requiem to life and it is certainly on my 'to buy' list for the next few weeks.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram