Requiem

I am listening to the Mozart Requiem, or Sussmeyer Requiem as I prefer to think of it. I am particularly fond of this version because I was at the concert where it was recorded and it features numerous friends of mine. The venue was a big church in Chelsea and to protect the acoustic the audience had to wait through some technical reruns of certain sections at the end of the performance. Far from destroying the ambience of the piece, this afforded a wonderful opportunity. For as the conductor ran through a section the mics hadn't caught properly, he suddenly lowered his baton mid-bar; the resonance of the chorus round the magnificent austere building faded into nothing; there followed a single moment of perfect suspended silence; and the conductor turned to the audience and said, "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the point at which Mozart died."