The late Sir Colin Davis summed Mozart up eloquently: ‘He’s not to be put under a glass case, he’s not to be looked up in books, he’s actually to be lived.’
Duncan Druce’s 1984 completion of the composer’s D-minor Requiem Mass follows suit. Sidestepping the pedestrian nature of the better-known Süssmayr version, it strides onward from Mozart’s famous opening movements with comparable imagination, daring and pathos.
It was in the Druce-half of the work that the touch paper of Saturday’s performance was lit. While the original segments were brought to life with outstanding accuracy, it was the jubilation and turmoil of the newer additions that roused the forces to something more.
The spotlight fell on a strong choir performance, vocal agility and power demonstrated particularly in the crystal-clear higher voices.
Whilst a luscious woodwind sound had been the staple of the Mozart, it was the strings of the Yorkshire Baroque Soloists that took a more muscular command in the less familiar waters of Haydn’s Maria Theresa Mass.
As precise and poignant as the Requiem had been, the results were all the more thrilling when choir and orchestra threw caution to the wind in the joyous uproar of the Haydn.
- Richard Powell
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