Most recordings of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem in D minor are based on the completion by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, which has become the standard performing version, though some of these offer minor modifications of the orchestration and alterations of Süssmayr's awkward counterpoint. Yet as far as historically informed reassessments of the Requiem are concerned, perhaps only Arthur Schoonderwoerd's performance with the Gesualdo Consort and Cristofori on the Accent label is an attempt to re-create the experience of a ...
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Most recordings of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem in D minor are based on the completion by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, which has become the standard performing version, though some of these offer minor modifications of the orchestration and alterations of Süssmayr's awkward counterpoint. Yet as far as historically informed reassessments of the Requiem are concerned, perhaps only Arthur Schoonderwoerd's performance with the Gesualdo Consort and Cristofori on the Accent label is an attempt to re-create the experience of a funeral mass in Vienna in the 1790s. This version presents Mozart's score in Süssmayr's completion, with touchups by Joseph Leopold Eybler, Johann Jacob Freystädtler, and Maximilian Stadler, while the Epistle, the Gospel, the Preface, the Absolution, and the final Requiescant in pace are sung in Gregorian chant. Additions to the Requiem are Schoonderwoerd's own completion of the Amen fugue that closes the Sequence, and the Libera me by Ignaz Ritter von Seyfried, a composition that was...
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