Performances of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem in D minor typically fall into two categories: traditional versions for large choir and orchestra of the completion by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, and leaner interpretations with smaller forces and original instrumentation, based on period practices and revisionist scholarship. Camps have developed around these styles of performance, though there was a time when the lines were not so clearly drawn, and the thoughtful explorations of Karl Richter seem in retrospect to stand ...
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Performances of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem in D minor typically fall into two categories: traditional versions for large choir and orchestra of the completion by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, and leaner interpretations with smaller forces and original instrumentation, based on period practices and revisionist scholarship. Camps have developed around these styles of performance, though there was a time when the lines were not so clearly drawn, and the thoughtful explorations of Karl Richter seem in retrospect to stand somewhere between sides. In this durable 1961 recording, reissued many times over the years, Richter followed convention by performing the Süssmayr version of the Requiem without revised orchestration or additional music, yet looked forward to historically informed practices through the deployment of leaner choral textures, more focused orchestral sonorities, crisper rhythms, and forward-leaning tempos with little rubato, to create readings that were not weighed down by excessive reverence....
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