King’s College Choir continue releases on their own label with a performance of the ‘traditional’ version of Mozart’s Requiem, as completed after his death by Franz Xaver Süssmayr. This is once again enjoying a greater vogue than in recent years, which have seen completions by a number of composers and musicologists, notable among them Duncan Druce of this parish. A major point of interest in King’s College’s project is the inclusion of whole movements from some of these more recent attempts to realise Mozart’s supposed intentions: thus we hear the ‘Amen’ fugue developed by Richard Maunder from a 16-bar sketch discovered in the 1960s, a ‘Sanctus’ as envisioned by Robert Levin, Druce’s extended ‘Benedictus’ and Levin’s closing fugue (although Maunder’s more interventionist revision, re-laying the text of the countersubject, might have been more noticeably different than Levin’s ‘lightly revised’ offering). Most fascinatingly, however, we hear the ‘Lacrimosa’ from Michael Finnissy’s recent realisation, which truly whets the appetite for a complete recording.

The performance of the Requiem itself is a straight-down-the-middle oratorio-style affair such as is heard from many a choir or choral society. The Academy of Ancient Music provide solid support and choral scholars sing lustily. The boys, however, have a tendency towards sharpness: beam up in the ‘Dies irae’ at about 0'36", where the trebles enter (bar 22) on E at the top of the stave, followed in the next bar by the same (sounding) E in the trumpet, and you’ll hear two noticeably different views on the same note; the boys might also have benefited from another run at ‘ne absorbeat’ in the Offertory – and it’s the same story largely throughout. A bonus disc with a generous audio documentary by a leading Mozart scholar is provided but by that point I’d resorted to the earplugs.

No such tuning issues in Leonardo García Alarcón’s recording, and a performance that emphasises the work’s drama in a manner that puts one in mind of Teodor Currentzis’s offering from Novosibirsk. Nothing so straightforward as the Süssmayr version, either: Alarcón opts to base his performance on Franz Beyer’s 1971 edition but with many of his own amendments, most audibly in the brass parts. Not only that but he interpolates Maunder’s ‘Amen’ after Süssmayr’s plagal close to the ‘Lacrimosa’ and – again following Maunder’s thinking – omits entirely the ‘Sanctus’, ‘Benedictus’ and ‘Agnus Dei’, deeming that they ‘belong…to a post-Mozartian aesthetic that differs from the rest of the Requiem’. (So too then, for that matter, do the ‘Amen’ and Süssmayr’s ‘Lacrimosa’ continuation – Mozart’s handwriting breaks off after only eight bars.) If you were wondering how he managed to fit the 26-minute Clarinet Concerto on a single disc with the Requiem, now you know. For the concerto, Benjamin Dieltjens reconstructs both instrument and score to reach the notes we can only presume Mozart once reached (the manuscript disappeared shortly after the work was published, in an adaptation that renders it playable on the common or garden clarinet in A).

So we are presented with an incomplete Requiem. Currentzis’s recording (mentioned above) presents pretty much the full Süssmayr score with the fragmentary ‘Amen’; if you want boys in tune, Edward Higginbottom at New College, Oxford, is a recent contender, George Guest at King’s College’s near neighbour, St John’s, a slightly older one. Beyer’s edition has been tackled by many including, in his own unique way, Leonard Bernstein. There is still much to be said on the subject of the Requiem, 222 years after its conception. These two recordings are sure to be among the countless many that add to the debate.