Mozart: Requiem in D Minor - 04/16 Blu-ray (Rental)

Mozart did not write the Requiem as despairing funeral music for his impending death. Rather, the piece proclaims eternal light and redemption. Together with a first-class quartet of soloists, the choirs of the Bavarian and Swedish radios and the distinguished musicians of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Claudio Abbado uncovers this more hopeful and forgiving essence of the Requiem. The baton is not a magic wand it cannot join together the fragmentary work that Mozart composed in the face of death. Yet, in Abbados hand, the baton could become a guide to the mysterious, sublime, consoling legacy of Mozart. --Deutschlandradio Kultur "The undisputed focal point here is the conductor himself, whose soulful intensity, both heard and seen, makes this video an important complement to any of the fine recordings in the catalogue." --David J. Baker, Opera News, February 2014