Everybody knows that Mozart left his Requiem unfinished when he died on December 5th, 1791, and that his widow Constanze finally entrusted his pupil Franz Xaver Sussmayr (1766-1803) with the job of finishing the score and preparing it for publication; and most people agree that Sussmayr's completion leaves a good deal to be desired, even though it enabled Mozart's last masterpiece to be performed as a satisfying whole and not just as a torso. Sussmayr's edition held the field for close on two centuries, but in 1971 it was challenged by a new version by Franz Beyer, which made a valiant attempt at correcting Sussmayr's faulty harmonizations and improving his insensitive scoring.
The edition by Richard Maunder, which is used in this new recording under Christopher Hogwood, is very much more radical than Beyer's. The changes (and the reasons for them) are explained in detail in the booklet which accompanies the record, and a summary of them will be found in ''News & Views'' on page 293. Briefly, it means that the Lacrimosa continues differently after bar 8 (where Mozart's score breaks off) and is concluded by a fugal ''Amen'', for which sketches by Mozart came to light about 20 years ago, that the Sanctus, Osanna and Benedictus are omitted completely, as being by Sussmayr and not by Mozart, and that the orchestral text has been cleaned up throughout.
It goes without saying that the performance itself is as 'authentic' as possible: that the sound is as close to what Mozart would have expected to hear as modern research and techniques can make it. The size of the orchestra was determined by the performance material used at the first performance of Mozart's arrangement of Handel's Messiah for Baron van Swieten in 1759 (it was van Swieten who mounted the first performance of the Requiem, on January 2nd, 1793), and is based on a string section of 6.6.4.3.2; the instruments are all original ones or modern copies and an impressive list it is too. For the Messiah performance Mozart used professional soloists (including two women), who joined in the choruses with the choir of 12 men and boys. Here the choir is slightly larger but still, of course, all-male, and their reproduction of a continental sound is enhanced by the fact that they—and, of course, the soloists—use the traditional Austro-German pronunciation of Latin.
The solo team is strong one, with Carolyn Watkinson and Anthony Rolfe Johnson in particularly fine voice. Apart from their own solo contributions they blend with Emma Kirkby and David Thomas to form a surprisingly homogeneous quartet: surprisingly, because although Emma Kirkby sings with all her habitual artistry, her ultra-pure boy-like sound is, to my ears at any rate, notably out of character with the eloquent, impassioned singing of her three colleagues. The performance as a whole is fervent and committed and for this we must thank Christopher Hogwood and Richard Maunder (and the Decca engineers for reproducing it so vividly).
Sussmayr's edition of the Requiem will no doubt continue to be performed for years (and to anyone wanting a recording of it I would strongly recommend the recent one conducted by Peter Schreier on Philips 6514 320, 3/84), but this new, pioneering version is an absolute revelation.'