Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Requiem (Jordi Savall)

Information

Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• Requiem in D Minor, K. 626

Rachel Redmond; Marianne Beate Kielland

Mingjie Lei; Manuel Walser

La Capella Nacional de Catalunya

Le Concert des Nations

Jordi Savall, conductor

Date: 2023

Label: Alia Vox

https://www.alia-vox.com/en/producte/mozart-requiem-jordi-savall/

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Review

Conductor and ensemble leader Jordi Savall recorded Mozart's Requiem in D minor, D. 626, in 1991 when historically oriented performances of Mozart were not so common. That recording has remained successful, and even in 1991, Savall had a better feel for Mozart than any number of other conductors in the historical performance field. However, this 2022 reading with Le Concert des Nations (26 instrumentalists) and the Capella Nacional de Catalunya (24 singers) is preferable. It is not cut from a fundamentally different cloth, but Savall adds immediacy, intensity, and speed. Audiences have responded well, putting the new album on classical best-seller charts in the spring of 2023. A chunk of the credit goes to the Alia Vox engineering staff working at the Château de Cardona in Catalonia. The recording has modest forces, but the miking is close up, and the sound is that of a much larger ensemble. It is really an exemplary essay in how to avoid the wan sound afflicting so many undersized ensembles that disappear into vast church spaces. As he has in other Classical-period recordings, Savall takes most movements at unusually fast speeds, pushing his youthful singers and his brass players to the edge but not beyond it, and the balance among the forces remains careful and clear. The big dark movements here -- the Dies irae and the Confutatis -- have an intensity matched in few other recordings of the Requiem. The soloists are not extraordinary, but this is not an operatic work, and it is probably best not to have them stand out. Entering his ninth decade, Savall continues to produce distinctive and often moving readings of Classical and Romantic repertory in addition to music in his core specialties.

-- James Manheim, AllMusic

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 in Salzburg – 5 December 1791 in Vienna) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. Till his death in Vienna, he composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. Mozart is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and his influence is profound on subsequent Western art music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart

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Jordi Savall (born August 1, 1941) is a Catalan conductor, viol player and composer. He has been one of the major figures in the field of Western early music since the 1970s, largely responsible for reviving the use of viol family instruments in contemporary performance and recording. As a historian of early music his repertoire features everything from medieval, Renaissance and Baroque through to the Classical and Romantic periods. Savall is founder of the ensemble Hespèrion XX/XXI and the orchestra Le Concert des Nations. His discography includes more than 200 recordings on EMI Classics, Astrée and Alia Vox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordi_Savall

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