It has been easy to overlook for years on end, by musicians and music lovers alike: as if Mozart's Requiem had been largely completely transmitted, when that – alas! – is decidedly not the case. You can read the rather complicated story behind it here (that was the state of affairs at the end of 2006, because afterwards several more completion attempts have been undertaken).
Pichon has dared with his Pygmalion to interweave the Requiem (in the version completed by Süssmayr) with a number of other works by the composer. Should we be pleased about that? No, because it detracts from both that Requiem and from those loose pieces: they do not strengthen each other at all. Moreover – and perhaps this weighs most heavily – the historical context of both those loose sections and the mass for the dead is thereby completely torn from its connection.
What inspired Pichon? He explains it extensively in the cd booklet, but it has not been able to convince me. In his words, under the heading 'Memento' (the translation is mine):
'By invoking a heritage and a tradition (musical architecture, contrapuntal writing, the influence of Gregorian chant), Mozart indicates that he identifies with the concept of remembrance. But this also raises the question of his own memory, and the personal journey of this testamentary work. A particularly striking example for me came when I got to know the Kyrie KV 90 – here parodied on the incipit of the Miserere mei (Psalm 51 [50]) and placed in our recording just before the first part of the Requiem. This short piece was probably written in Salzburg in 1771 at the age of fifteen – two years after Mozart had studied counterpoint with Padre Martini – drawing from a memory close to the style of Palestrina: the development of a contrapuntal motif in the Dorian mode. With the astonishing naturalness that is so characteristic of Mozart's genius, the short composition moves forward relentlessly, and it is an enormous shock to realize that the opening measures of this polyphonic work, written by the young teenager, also possess in the key of d minor, the melodic contours and the very special atmosphere of the opening gateway to his great mass for the dead, composed twenty years later. This discovery soon enabled me to make the choices with which one is inevitably confronted when approaching the Requiem, for there are so many possibilities with regard to this work – whether it be the construction of a possible program to surround and complete it, or the 'version' of the score to be used.
For the completion of an unfinished masterwork after the composer's death always provokes debate and criticism. Successive experiences with this score over more than a decade have convinced me firmly that the Requiem as completed by Süssmayr seems closely aligned with what Mozart wanted to achieve. Without going too deeply into musicological questions, it seems clear to me that Süssmayr could rely on numerous oral instructions, as well as sketches, which are now lost, of the parts that follow the Offertorium. Detailed study of the music Süssmayr composed elsewhere reveals that he never had the imagination to produce pages of such emotional power. Listen to the Agnus Dei! It seems clear to me that the essence of this section was conveyed to him. One could also mention the return of the music of the Introitus for the Communio, now illuminated by the radiant key of B-flat major. This choice, far from a weakness as is often claimed, is in accordance with a tradition also respected by Michael Haydn's Requiem (which employs a similar device), and underscores the circular character of the work with such beauty and intensity!
Nevertheless, there are some remarkable exceptions to this favorable impression of Süssmayr's work. One of them is the Sanctus, which after an introduction of exceptional nobility, certainly partly originating from Mozart, gives way to a fugue on the 'Hosanna' that seriously suffers from a lack of breadth and development. Moreover, the 'Benedictus', which in my view breathes a typically Mozartian atmosphere in its first section, subsequently becomes entangled in complicated development. The sense of naturalness so characteristic of Mozart's genius eluded Süssmayr here clearly. This irreversible deficiency is latently present and manifests itself especially in the orchestral writing and its minute details. The pulse and colors of this orchestra-as-character, which opens the first sections of the Requiem with such special magic, seem at times to ebb away. Yet Süssmayr's 'version', despite this undeniable fact, has stamped its imprint over more than two centuries on so many men and women, with its immense qualities and its imperfections, that it seems to me to remain the most universal. The textures and colors are the measures of the indelible impressions, whispered or screamed, that the Requiem leaves with all of us. Our choice was made. A choice of the heart.
I wanted to bring together the threads of this interplay of memories, this journey through time, instead of continuing the impossible quest to complete the score. And so our journey begins with Gregorian chant, an expression of times past as much as of the transience of life, thanks to the presence of a child's voice. If this first In paradisum, which normally concludes the Requiem in Catholic liturgy, proves impossible to sing to the end, it is because we first need the collective experience of a celebration of life. And so it is unexpectedly interrupted by the solo quartet with the short canon Ach, zu kurz ist unsers Lebens Lauf KV 228/515b (Ah, too short is our life's course!), before the choir – the protagonist of the Requiem – takes the stage in the Miserere mei KV 90. Within the Requiem itself, in a sometimes disorienting series of mirrors, a dialogue is engaged with memories of various rarely heard pieces that marked Mozart's personal history: the stunning vision of Ne pulvis et cinis KV Anh.122, drawn from the incidental music for Thamos KV 345 (Mozart was only seventeen!); the sketch (or study?) of what would soon become a thematic element in the Kyrie of the Mass in C minor KV 427 via the little Solfeggio KV 393/2; the anonymous arrangement of one of his instrumental masterworks, the Adagio from the Gran Partita KV 361, heard here in the unexpected form of a seraphic motet (Quis te comprehendat KV Anh.110). Finally, at the epicenter of the work, after the 'Lacrimosa', an experience of emptiness with the unfinished sketch (just a few measures) for the fugal Amen that was perhaps intended to conclude the Sequentia. It is from this musical 'black hole' that the Offertorium is born, beginning with the life energy of 'Domine Jesu Christe'.
At the end of this journey, after having 'lived through' it and released an extraordinary amount of energy, we can finally return to the original In paradisum. Although it can now run its full course, some final echoes remind us that this voice is also the expression of all mankind.'
No doubt about it: Pichon did not want to compromise his musical integrity for a second. I admire his solid exposition, but its musical realization stands too far removed from my lived experience, both with regard to the Requiem and the other inserted pieces. Even after listening three times, I could only conclude that the whole makes an extremely disjointed, not to say messy impression. The only solution fitting for me proved to be programming the various tracks in such a way that this – in itself magnificent – performance of the Requiem could be enjoyed in an uninterrupted sequence; with the remaining pieces in any order of my own choosing if desired, certainly worth the effort with in the In paradisum and the Solfeggio the perfectly pure boy soprano Chadi Lazreq. The other soloists also demonstrate their vocal class, with the choir and orchestra of Pygmalion under Pichon in equally convincing interpretations.