Mozart - Requiem ed Süssmayr/Dutron

The Guardian 40

RIAS Kammerchor, Freiburger Barockorchester/Jacobs
(Harmonia Mundi)

There have been repeated efforts to improve on Süssmayr’s completion of Mozart’s unfinished Requiem. Pierre-Henri Dutron takes a creative approach, not just correcting Süssmayr’s infelicities but rewriting stretches of the music, changing bars of the Sanctus and Hosanna, completely reimagining the Benedictus, adding a few bars to the Lux Aeterna, and filling out the orchestration with basset horns in the Tuba Mirum and raging timpani in the Confutatis. The results are sometimes stimulating, often jarring. There is fine work from the soloists under René Jacobs, and plenty of force in his direction, but the sopranos have a tendency to sing flat at the ends of phrases.