Honeck aims at a horizon of hope & transcendence in Mozart’s Requiem

When Manfred Honeck conducts Mozart’s Requiem, he is not just thinking about audiences — he’s thinking about congregations.

Honeck, a distinguished conductor from Mozart’s homeland of Austria, has a long history of thinking about different ways to present the composer’s famously unfinished final masterpiece. When he conducts Mozart’s Requiem at Orchestra Hall on Nov. 20-23, the work will be interspersed with tolling bells and Gregorian chant, in the way that the piece might originally have been performed in a cathedral in the 1790s.

“The Mozart Requiem has always been a mystery,” he said in a recent interview via email. “Anonymously written, finished by somebody else, Mozart´s last work — this is as dramatic as it gets. I wanted to give the Requiem a natural habitat on stage.”

Performing a sacred work on stage, however, is already a departure from the way that the music was presented in Mozart’s time. Although public concerts were becoming part of urban life in the late 18th century, the composer would have expected his Requiem to be performed in a church. “Parts of it were first performed in a liturgy around the time when Mozart himself died and had a funeral mass celebrated for him,” Honeck said. “One should get a sense for that.”

To help modern audiences understand that setting, Honeck will begin and end the piece with tolling bells, the way that churches used to announce deaths in the community: a practice that still endures in the Austrian countryside, he said. Between movements of Mozart’s music, the Chicago Symphony Chorus will perform Gregorian chants appropriate to the time and setting. “The Laudate Dominum and the Ave Verum are among the most beautiful pieces of spiritual music,” he said.

Honeck’s presentation is a nod in the direction of historically informed performance, which has seen an explosion of interest in the last half-century or so. Many early instrument groups have arisen to perform the music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, but the 18th century today is the most common area of overlap. Modern-instrument orchestras such as the CSO and period-instrument groups both perform the work of Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn and more.

“There are ensembles of historic instruments here and there which have an important role to play and are able to show aspects in the music which we wouldn’t otherwise hear,” Honeck said. “On the other hand, it is important that the great modern orchestras should not avoid repertoire which was redefined by historic-sound ensembles. It is the right thing to do, in my opinion, to play a piece like the Mozart Requiem with modern instruments, creating the best sound quality possible.”

Many arguments have been waged on these topics in classical circles, but Honeck added, “I am great advocate of liberty in these matters. There is no place for dogmatism here.”

Even modern-instrument groups are interested in some aspects of historically informed performance, and Honeck is thinking along those lines when he gives CSO audiences a chance to hear Mozart in something like its original context. “History matters. But it should not hinder interpreters to find new ways of reading the music,” he said. “We should not give into the illusion that we can replicate the feelings or the sound of the time when the Requiem was composed. It must sound different today.”

But the message and the feelings of the music have remained constant over the centuries. “We need to touch the hearts in the hall,” Honeck said. “For me it is crucial that every Requiem ends with a horizon of hope and transcendence. Thinking about Mozart, whose legacy gives us so much joy, can also induce us to think about how grateful we can be for our loved ones who have already left us.”