Mozart Requiem/OCO, Barbican Hall - classical review

There is something poignant about unfinished musical works. Like architectural ruins, they challenge us to imagine what might have been. On the other hand, there is a satisfying integrity to the two movements of Schubert’s Eighth Symphony, the “Unfinished”: it may be less than a complete work but it’s much more than a fragment.

In this carefully weighted performance by the Orchestra of Classical Opera under its artistic director Ian Page, the opening phrases cast an ominous shadow that lingered throughout. There’s a lack of pomposity to period instruments that particularly suits Schubert. Here, the timpani packed a hefty punch, the brass rasped fruitily and the strings had a plaintive, nearly vocal quality. A few rough patches in the orchestra only added to the work’s humanity, although there were moments when Page’s reading felt almost becalmed.

Mozart’s Requiem is more thoroughly unfinished, its composition curtailed by death itself. There have been several attempts at completing it; Page opted for the first and most familiar, by Mozart’s former pupil Süssmayr. Here, too, the occasional lack of orchestral polish mattered little. Page had assembled a quartet of soloists fit to grace any opera stage; indeed, they invested their solos with a fervour that wouldn’t have been out of place in the opera house. Soprano Sophie Bevan and mezzo Sarah Connolly radiated light while tenor John Mark Ainsley was ardent and bass Darren Jeffery sonorous. Fine as they were, they were outshone by the Philharmonia Chorus, easily outnumbering the orchestral players and at times threatening to blast it from the stage. It sang with a lusty intensity that was at times overwhelming; if heaven wasn’t quite stormed, it wasn’t because of any lack of choral power.

Schubert and Mozart might have been riches enough for most of us but Page offered a couple of rarities to fill out the programme. A brief funeral march by Cherubini made a rather odd prelude to Mozart’s Requiem, although the insistent crash of a gong gave it a mysterious, almost hieratic quality; while a Haydn motet presented the mighty chorus with another chance to show what it could do.

Its title — Insanae et vanae curae (“vain and raging cares”) — suggested turbulence, and that is what it delivered.