13 - Mozart's Requiem: Festival Chorus, Festival Orchestra

Starting with the masonic mystery of the Magic Flute overture and its pantomime story of magic flutes, bells and forces of good and evil we move to the contemporary Argentinian composer Golijov’s beautiful meditation on the Couperin’s Leçon des Ténèbres inspired by light, dark and space.  

Mozart’s Requiem is a classic of the repertoire though it remained incomplete on his death.  What the composer left behind was substantial enough for Franz Süssmayr, Mozart’s friend and pupil,  to finish the work without any sense that it was not the great composer’s completion.  The work was originally requested by a mysterious commissioner, who turned out to be Count von Walsegg possibly wishing to pass the music off as his own work, but there is a sense in the music that this was personal and Mozart knew he didn’t have long in life.  The music is powerful, delicate and fearful.