Mozart Requiem: The Portuguese Historical Score
Americantiga Ensemble, Ricardo Bernardes
Americantiga AAE2601. 45′
As the 2020 Covid lockdowns started, I reviewed a livestreamed concert from Portugal that a cellist friend of mine was playing in. You can read that review here, That concert, given by the Americantiga Ensemble under the local Covid restrictions of the time (which allowed a maximum of 10 people and no audience), included the première of an anonymous early 19th-century version of Mozart’s Requiem based on a manuscript found in the Cathedral of Évora. That included the vocal text of Mozart’s original, but required just four singers and a completely different chamber-style accompaniment based on basso continuo instruments (cello, two bassoons, double bass, and organ) – the cello part (played by Pedro Massarrão) is particularly prominent. They have now realised a world premiere recording of that Requiem, as part of the 30th anniversary of the Americantiga Ensemble.
for Aspasia to walk through without turning sideways. She later appeared as though sitting behind a large bedecked dinner table, as pictured. Indeed the striking costume design was one of the main features of this production, which included a number of impressively choreograph set-piece dances, at one stage complete with a lot of foot-stomping, stick-banging and skirt-twirling, the whole more in Japanese than Anatolian (or 18th century European) style.
I didn’t see the 2010 production of Don Giovanni, or this summer’s Festival revival, so for me this was a new show. Set in a post-Mussolini Italy, the broody set, designed by Paul Brown, is focused on a massive central cube that presents all four of its sides, plus different incarnations of the central space, to the audience. It is a powerful image, but not without potential issues. Its overpowering presence centre stage pushes most of the action to the front or the side of the stage: no bad thing in itself, but giving a rather cramped feeling 
Mozart: Sonata in D, K381; Sonata in C, K521; Sonata in B-flat, K358, JC Bach: Sonata in A.
centred on the fascinating character Joseph de Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George (b1745), the son of a wealthy French plantation owner in Guadeloupe, and his African slave. Educated back in France from the age of 7, he first became known as a fencer, graduating from the Academy of fencing and horsemanship aged 21 and somehow collecting the title of chevalier (knight) on the way. Quite how he achieved his skills in music is not known, but the composers Lolli and Gossec had already dedicated works to him before he was 21. He quickly became one of the leading Parisian violinists and orchestra leaders. He briefly lived in the same house as Mozart (the mansion of his mentor, the Duke of Orléans in Paris), and was leader of the enormous Masonic Loge Olympique orchestra, for which Haydn wrote his Paris Symphonies.
Andrew Benson-Wilson : Early Music Reviews + 