Tonight Honeck conducted the CSO in Mozart’s Requiem:
CSO and the Chicago Symphony Chorus
Honeck’s arrangement wove together Mozart’s Requiem (K.626) with several of his earlier funeral works, linked by backstage Gregorian chants:
Special Mozart Requiem program from CSO’s official program book. It clarifies the interesting history untangle the complicated authorship of Requiem. CSO’s really got amazing people writing program notes.
My favorite touch was how he opened and closed the performance with three bell strikes. It felt like a signal: we’re stepping out of the everyday world and into a different space for forty minutes, then gently returned.
I’m probably still too young to really get a requiem. But the music is overwhelming in the best way, and the CSO performed it with such clarity and force that it convinced me again why Mozart’s Requiem sits at the center of — well, the realm of classical music. The Lacrimosa—even just those first eight bars that technically Mozart left us—is unbelievably powerful. The text is as moving as the music, and the whole progression feels like something only Mozart could write:
Lamentable is that day, on which guilty man shall arise from the ashes to be judged. Spare then this one, O God. Merciful Lord Jesus: grant them reset. Amen.
Here’s a classic live recording of Lacrimosa by Abbado with the Berliner Philharmonic, at Saltberg Cathedral in memory of Karajan: