[SACD-R][OF] Sir Charles Mackerras, Scottish Chamber Orchestra - Mozart: Requiem in D Minor; Adagio and Fugue - 2003 (Orchestral, Choral)

Mozart's Requiem - the composer's last and unfinished work - was commissioned by Count Franz von Wallsegg, who wished to have it performed in memory of his departed wife as his own composition. In order not to forfeit the handsome commission fee, Mozart's widow Constanze decided to have the work completed in secrecy, so that the finished version could be presented as her husband's final effort. The Requiem is known to the general public in the version undertaken by Mozart's pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Süssmayr based his completion on Mozart's virtually complete score of the ‘Introitus' and drafts of all sections from the ‘Kyrie' fugue to the ‘Hostias'. These contain the completed vocal parts (solo and chorus) and the orchestral bass line, with occasional motives for the orchestral accompaniment. However, the ‘Lacrimosa' breaks off after the eighth bar. To these Mozartean materials Süssmayr added settings of the ‘Sanctus' (Hosanna), ‘Benedictus', ‘Agnus Dei' and the ‘Lux aeterna' and ‘Cum sanctis tuis' (Communion). The Communion is merely a newly texted version of part of the ‘Introitus' and of the ‘Kyrie' fugue.
In making his completion, Süssmayr could draw on the partial completion of the sequence done by Joseph Eybler soon after Mozart's death. He may have had access to a further important source - a sketch leaf which includes contrapuntal studies for the ‘Rex tremendae' as well as the beginning of an ‘Amen' fugue to close the ‘Lacrimosa'. However, Süssmayr did not include a realisation of this fugue in his version; he set the ‘Amen' with two chords at the end of the ‘Lacrimosa'.
The key question about Süssmayr's version is whether any of the portions of the Requiem that are not in Mozart's hand were based on his ideas. Although Süssmayr claimed to have composed these alone, they display the tight motivic construction of Mozart's fragment, in which a small number of themes recur from movement to movement; Süssmayr's own music lacks such motivic interrelationships. Perhaps, then, the ‘few scraps of music' Constanze remembers giving to Süssmayr together with Mozart's manuscript contained material not found in Mozart's draft. Mozart may also have suggested certain ideas to Süssmayr on the piano.
A clear evaluation of the movements Süssmayr claimed to have composed is clouded by unmistakable discrepancies within them between idiomatically Mozartean lines and grammatical and structural flaws that are utterly foreign to Mozart's idiom. First attacked in 1825, these include glaring errors of voice leading in the orchestral accompaniment of the ‘Sanctus' and the awkward, truncated Hosanna fugue. Furthermore, Süssmayr brings back this fugue after the ‘Benedictus' in B-flat major rather than the original D major, in conflict with all church music of the time.
The version heard in this performance seeks to address the problems of instrumentation, grammar and structure within Süssmayr's version while respecting the 200-year-old history of the Requiem. A clearly drawn line of separation, in which everything except the contents of Mozart's autograph was to be considered spurious per se, was explicitly rejected. Rather, the goal was to revise not as much, but as little as possible, attempting in the revisions to observe the character, texture, voice leading, continuity and structure of Mozart's music. The traditional version has been retained insofar as it agrees with idiomatic Mozartean practice. The more transparent instrumentation of the new completion was inspired by Mozart's other church music. The ‘Lacrimosa' has been slightly altered and now leads into a non-modulating ‘Amen' fugue. Other completions of the fugue modulate extensively. The second half of the ‘Sanctus' resolves the curious tonal discrepancies of Süssmayr's version, and the revised Hosanna fugue, modelled after that of Mozart's Mass in C minor, K. 427/417a, displays the proportions of a Mozartean church fugue. The second half of the ‘Benedictus' has been slightly revised and is connected by a new transition to a shortened reprise of the Hosanna fugue in the original key of D major. The structure of the ‘Agnus Dei' has been retained, but the infelicities of Süssmayr's version have been averted in the second and third strophes. In the final ‘Cum sanctis tuis' fugue, the text setting has been altered to correspond to the norms of the era.
It is hoped that the new version honours Mozart's spirit while allowing the listener to experience Mozart's magnificent Requiem torso within the sonic framework of its historical tradition.
© Robert D. Levin, 2003
Adagio & Fugue in C minor, K. 546
Mozart neither disparaged Bach, nor considered it in any way retrogressive to be influenced by Bachian counterpoint. In 1782, as director of Baron van Swieten's Sunday concerts in Vienna, he played Bach fugues, made transcriptions of Bach fugues and wrote fugues of his own in tribute to his connoisseur patron's enthusiasm for Baroque music. In 1789, en route to Berlin, he visited Bach's Thomaskirche in Leipzig where he improvised for an hour on the chorale Jesu meine Zuversicht. Bach's Leipzig successor, Cantor Doles, sat beside him at the organ, pulling the stops and saying ‘old Sebastian Bach has risen again.'
The visitor, it was observed, was ‘a young, modishly dressed man of medium height,' who played ‘beautifully and artfully for a large audience.' The choir sang Bach's fine motet, Singet den Herrn, in his honour, and Mozart examined Bach's autographs: ‘The parts spread all around him, held in both of his hands, on his knees, and on the adjoining chairs.' Two years later, in The Magic Flute, he would give the Two Armed Men stern, beautiful, hauntingly Bachian music to sing.
The Fugue in C minor dates from six years earlier, when Mozart was first immersed in contrapuntal studies. Originally written for two pianos, it was arranged in 1788 for strings and given the slow, sombre introduction which so strikingly adds to its intensity, yet which Mozart described as no more than ‘a short adagio for two violins, viola, and bass, for a fugue I wrote a long time ago.' The Adagio is filled with bold, expressive harmonic progressions. The Fugue, once set in motion, rolls on relentlessly to its close. The music, playable by string quartet or string orchestra, has a hard-edged severity quite uncommon in Mozart, but confirming how the Baroque and the Rococo could co-exist in Classical Vienna. A dark, somewhat spooky, conductorless performance of it was given at Herbert von Karajan's funeral in 1989.
© Conrad Wilson, 2003
Sunday Herald Review
Those of you who keep half an eye on Scottish technology might be aware of the Glasgow company Linn, a manufacturer of high-quality hi-fi and until recently one of the few companies in Britain still producing vinyl LPs. It still nobly produces a superb turntable for vinyl aesthetes, but its recording division has moved with the times to embrace compact discs and new-generation innovations such as Super Audio CDs.
Recent releases from Linn show a welcome drift away from its 1990s preoccupation with early music — but its recording of the Mozart Requiem with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra demonstrates a continuing interest in the unusual, for this is an edition of the Requiem edited by American musicologist Robert Levin. It is widely known that Mozart never finished his final work, but his widow Constanze needed the cash from the commission and persuaded Mozart’s pupil Sussmayr to complete the Requiem in secret. The ploy was successful, and by the time Sussmayr’s input had been rumbled his completion had become established as the Mozart Requiem we know today.
Sussmayr had access to extensive sketches in Mozart’s hand, but scholars now recognise numerous grammatical and structural errors in his completion and Levin’s edition is one of many attempts to reorganise the jigsaw without losing the whole picture. While some editors have simply rejected everything written by Sussmayr as superfluous, Levin is sympathetic to the 200-year-old history of the traditional version, and has tried to retain as much as possible of what we know.
At first glance this is simply the excellent performance you would expect from the SCO under Sir Charles Mackerras. But if you know the normal version it will become apparent by track nine that something unusual is afoot, with a new Amen fugue and a reworked Sanctus among the more obvious changes. Is it better? Almost certainly. But I would argue that the weight of history cannot allow its adoption except as a curiosity. Better a flawed masterpiece than none at all.