Soloists Katharine Crompton & Edward Grint, Adam Tunnicliffe, and Theo Golden, singing in a concert that will move you to tears at Cadogan Hall, 10 March
We are not sure how much of the Requiem Mozart wrote or planned in detail with his pupil Franz Sussmayer, before he died a few bars into the Lacrimosa ('Mourning'). But when you hear the Work performed at Cadogan Hall on 10 March, "enjoy it all – whether it's your hundredth Requiem or your first," as BBC Radio 3 presenter Tom Service recommended in a preview for a performance in 2011.
"There's an endlessly fascinating enigma in the astonishing music Mozart did manage to compose," wrote Service. He highlights the Recordare ('Remember me, blessed Jesus... do not forsake me ') - a quartet for the four soloists, as a particularly "affecting" movement, for which Mozart had left detailed composition notes.
"Coming in between the austere choral pillars of the Rex Tremendae and the Confutatis, the intimacy and tenderness of the Recordare is devastating in its beauty, the Requiem's only vision of a world not wracked by pain or lament. It can't last, of course, but it's precisely because it's a fleeting glimpse of serenity that the Recordare is so shockingly moving."
Whew, Tom, can't wait to hear it sung by Katharine Crompton (soprano), Theo Golden (counter tenor), Adam Tunnicliffe (tenor) and Edward Grint (bass) a week tomorrow.
This is the classical concert of the month that will move you to tears: in addition to the Requiem, the programme includes Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, played so often on occasions of international mourning, and Leonard Bernstein's sometimes exciting, sometimes hauntingly beautiful Chichester Psalms.
The full article by Tom Service can be read at https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2011/dec/16/mozart-s-requiem-mysteries
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