René Jacobs reviews
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Schubert: Symphonies Nos 2 & 3
Schubert: Symphonies Nos 1 & 6
A Scarlatti: Il Primo Omicidio
Beethoven: Leonore
René Jacobs gives a 'bold, innovative and passionate' interpretation of Mozart's Requiem
Bold, innovative and passionate, René Jacobs’s new reading of Mozart’s Requiem towers above the crowd. Pierre-Henri Dutron’s new completion of this famously unfinished score illuminates how Mozart was re-forging his musical language in the year he died to make it tauter and deeper, yet more transparent. So forceful are Mozart’s ideas that they regenerate themselves even in the completion by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, which Dutron adapts to realise more fully Mozart’s new procedures.
Mozart: Die Zauberflote
Anyone tempted to programme the remote-control to skip over the dialogue in this Zauberflöte will rue the day. For this is a total experience, perfectly tailored for private listening. René Jacobs thinks of it as a Hörspiel: it’s a play to be heard – and I don’t know a recorded Zauberflöte more thrillingly alive with fantasy, profoundly musical imagination, real magic, and real fun too.