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This new performance of one of the most emblematic music works ever composed is the debut recording of Insula Orchestra, a new formation (on period instruments) co-founded in 2012 by Laurence Equilbey. Along with an impressive range of soloists (Sandrine Piau, Sara Mingardo, Werner Gra and Christopher Purves) and Accentus, the leading European choir also founded by Laurence Equilbey twenty years ago, they offer an intense and stylish performance of Mozarts Requiem. Composed in his final year and unfinished, the work is still today shrouded in mystery. "The Requiem was unfinished when Mozart died and was subsequently completed by his student, Franz Xaver Sssmayr, with some input by Jakob Freystdtler and Joseph Eybler. It is likely that they based their work on sketches by Mozart himself but, since these sketches no longer exist, we cannot be certain about that. Most performances adopt the Sssmayr completion: it may not be all Mozart but it is the closest we can get to Mozart's conception of the work." --Hans de Groot, Wholenote, November