Dunedin Consort - Mozart: Requiem - The Irish Times

"Reconstruction of first performance" claims the cover. What this means is that John Butt uses the latest scholarly text of the familiar Franz Süssmayr completion of Mozart's Requiem. And, to match the forces available at the Jahn-Saal in Vienna on January 2nd, 1793, he uses a choir of just 16 voices, which includes and is clearly led by the four vocal soloists, Joanne Lunn, Rowan Hellier, Thomas Hobbs and Matthew Brook. His orchestra numbers 31. Massiveness is out, meticulous observation is in. The performance is sinewy and expressive, lit as from within, and captures the contrapuntal writing in a way that can only be called pristine. There's also an even lighter reconstruction of the sections that might have been heard earlier at Mozart's actual funeral.