A Swedish 'Requiem'

2xHD Presents Mozart's Monumental 'Requiem Mass' In a New Light

It was just a few short weeks ago that our own Mark Ward reviewed the upcoming DG Original Source reissue of Karl Bohm’s 1971 outing of W.A. Mozart’s Requiem. If you would like a primer on the work, and also on separating your understanding of Mozart from the entertaining, but fictionalized tale presented in the film Amadeus, I would highly recommend reading Mark’s article here.

The core repertoire of the classical cannon is rich with different recordings and interpretations, and Mozart’s final work, a high point of the classical period style, has been recorded more or less to death. The work has shown up in film scores, commercials, YouTube video essays, and everything in between. If you’re shopping on vinyl, you have a wealth of recordings usually just sitting in the Mozart section of your favorite used record store. However, unlike some pieces in the repertoire, there’s no “one” recording that jumps to my mind when I think about this work.

For the old-school collectors, I’m sure the Karl Bohm reading is one that will resonate with you. It has those mid-20th century heavy tempos and thick instrumentation. A “Romantic” Requiem if you may. However, something happened to recorded classical music starting in the 1970s: a renewed interest in research on “early music,” often called “Historically Informed Performance”, or abbreviated as ‘HIP’. This movement brought music research and live performance together to better understand and recreate what 18th century music would have sounded like back in its day.

Well, HIP is an ongoing endeavor and my old graduate seminar at McGill University on this topic can attest to the fact that the arguments about what is and is not “authentic” are endless. Generally, we can understand a few core concepts about music from before the 19th century, and that’s that ensemble sizes were much smaller (music was played in smaller, often semi-private royal settings), and the instruments of the time sounded quite different. If you ever get the chance to see or hear a baroque oboe or similar early music instrument (reproduction or original), you will remark that it sounds softer, has a much lighter timbre, with a much mellower sound quality. Similar things can be said about flutes which were made entirely out of wood and had no keys, or violins/violas/cellos which used gut strings and thus sound much rounder and softer.

Much of the evolution of musical instruments in the 19th century is based around the evolving concept of the symphony orchestra. Over time, more and more musicians were added to the stage, to entertain a greater size of audience, as concerts were now for the middle classes as much as the aristocracy. The bores of the woodwinds got smaller in order to project better, metal keywork began to be used to play in a wider variety of keys, and the valve was invented to allow brass instruments to play chromatically, and thus be used in more music. There was this great interaction between the new music being written and the new changes happening to the instrumental families that worked in tandem. This was of course great for the new works and new venues of the day. The side effects of this evolution only arose in the 20th century, when performers began to look back to the older music of Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, and of course Mozart, which were now being played by 60+ musicians on a huge stage stocked with modern romantic instruments.

The Mozart family in the composer's youth. Note the difference in bow between a modern violin and the one pictured, this, plus gut strings contributed to a vastly difference sound than that of today's instruments

The HIP movement sought to address this dilemma by fusing what we knew at the time about how this music was originally played, and what we could feasibly do in performance now to get closer to that “authenticity”. The influence of this movement grew over time, and really reached an apex when labels like Harmonia Mundi and Telefunken began releasing recordings of Bach and Handel by conductors like Nikolaus Harnencourt and John Eliot Gardiner, performed by musicians playing on period reproduction instruments.

The new popularity of HIP recordings and concerts didn’t exist in a vacuum, and the traditional labels, conductors and orchestras did respond by adopting some but not all of the trappings of the HIP movement. This is why once the 70s roll around, you begin to see recordings of Bach, Handel, Mozart, and Haydn, with lighter instrumentation, quicker tempos, and more spritely playing. One particular recording I’ve listened to for a number of years is Sir Neville Marriner’s 1977 version with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields on UK Argo (ZRG 876) which at the time adopted many of the musical affects of the historical performance movement (size, lightness of playing) while maintaining modern instruments. And as fun as some of the period historical instrument performances can get, these are the types of recordings I find myself gravitating back to, because they connect the past with the present through practical compromise. And while the Marriner doesn’t necessarily feature some of the top flight vocal soloists of the earlier “romantic” versions, it’s musical interpretation is one I can get behind.

When I saw earlier this year that Canadian audiophile label 2xHD records was reissuing a rather obscure 1979 recording of the Requiem on vinyl, I was curious as to what kind of Requiem performance this would be, and what made it merit the attention of this reissue label. The recording in question was by Swedish choral conductor Stefan Sköld leading the orchestra he founded, the Choir of St. Jacob, alongside an orchestra of faculty and students from the Stockholm Conservatory. Issued on the Swedish label Proprius (PROP 7815), I’m not sure anyone would have ever caught this performance on their radar, but that’s the beauty of these smaller specialty reissue labels, they bring to light obscure gems often buried under more commercially successful releases. A domestic Swedish release of one of the most-recorded works by one of the most-recorded composers? Probably barely made a dent in 1979 (older audiophiles know the label for superb recorded sound on classics like "Cantate Domino" and "Jazz at the Pawnshop" so it's possible this one was also better known then_ed.). In 2025 however, when a label like 2xHD -run by veteran engineer René Laflamme and producer André Perry- releases a record, you tend to take notice.

Fortunately, this particular Requiem performance was a joy to listen to and discover, as it is one of the most considered recordings I’ve heard from the pre-digital era. While Sköld and his orchestra use modern instruments and a relatively large (but not huge) chorus, the playing is energetic, and the instrumentation is paired down to give the piece a much more flexible feel. Soloists too, while not household names, do an admirable job, particularly in the low voice department. The ‘Tuba Mirum’ featured dynamic and colorful solos from bass-baritone Magnus Linden and tenor Brian Burrows (the only name on this album some might recognize).

The tempos and playing style really help set this recording apart from its peers. The famous ‘Dies Irae’ really moves and flows, and by result it clocks in significantly quicker than almost all other recordings from the time at 1:45. Compare that to Marriner’s 1:53 or Karl Bohm’s rather lugubrious 2:00 minutes.

But it’s not just the tempos that give you the sense of liveliness in this recording. Listen to the opening cello solo in ‘Recordare’ and hear the refined and light musical tone produced. What vibrato is there does not shape the phrase like in a romantic line, but adds color and texture to the sound only. Meanwhile, the solo voices weave in between one another without the overpowering “mass” of sound (see what I did there?) from the operatic interpretations of the past.

So, I’ve made the case that this is a stand-out Requiem recording from a musical standpoint, so what about the sound? Well, this recording was made at St. Jacobs church in Stockholm, the home of this choir. This has its benefits and drawbacks: for one; obviously Stefan Sköld knew how to place his musicians in the space for maximum effect. The choir sound is expansive and images spectacularly. The texture of the orchestra is also first rate, and every instrument has a solid, tangible, and three dimensional image that delicately balances the directness of the sound with the interaction with the church. There are a few downsides, though. There is a noticeable lack of bass on this recording, which tends to happen when you swap the wood of a concert hall stage with the stone of a church. However, there is not much bass in Mozart’s Requiem anyway, with what little bass there is coming from a two-drum timpani and what sounds like a single double bass.

The St. Jacob Church in Stockholm

The lack of bass is more than made up for in the clarity of the instruments, with a slight emphasis on the upper midrange and lower treble. The very top of the frequency spectrum sometimes gets lost in the sound during more dominant sections, but then reemerges in the delicate moments such as the epic ‘Confutatis’ or the dynamic ‘Domine Jesu’ where the sopranos sound as if they are a ray of light shining through the musical texture.

The scaled down orchestra and considerate playing also allow one of the best strengths of this recording to come through, microdynamics, which are present in everything from the trombone solo to the vocal features. The dynamic range can be powerful when naturally called for, but the Mozart Requiem is just not a piece that is going to overwhelm you with slam and bombast. It is an intimate choral work with complex textures and through this new vinyl remastering by 2xHD, all these qualities shine through. Instrumental color is vivid and complex, while everything interacts naturally with the acoustic space around it. If you want to hear realistic vocal or instrumental texture, this recording will captivate you.

2xHD engineer René Laflamme mastered this release from the original analog masters currently held by Naxos on the company’s 2xHD Fusion Mastering System which includes among other gadgets, a Nagra-T tape recorder wired with OCC silver cabling. The cutting was performed by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering on their all-tube cutting chain. My pressing, done by Le Vinylist in Quebec city (I believe this is only my second experience with this plant) with plating by Mastercraft, was fairly quiet, even if the record surface didn’t look like it would be. The listening experience was only occasionally marred by a bit of tape hiss, completely acceptable for a recording of this age and with a relatively low cutting-level most likely to preserve the dynamics of the recording.

2xHD picked a gem with this Mozart recording, and whether you are new to the piece, or have a dedicated section for it on your record shelf, this recording can be an excellent place to start to understand Mozart’s vocal and orchestral writing in unburdened clarity.