03.12.2024

OLIVIA VERMEULEN returns to Japan for Mozart’s Requiem

After “shining” earlier this month in Mozart’s other great choral work, the Mass in C Minor, in which she was praised for her grace and homogenous colouration, Olivia Vermeulen returns to Tokyo with Mozart’s Requiem. On 3 December she joins the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony and their conductor Masato Suzuki, together with the RIAS Kammerchor as part of their Asia tour, to perform the impressive piece in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall.

Having performed the Requiem last season at the Rheingau festival in Germany and in San Sebastian, Spain, the work has grown to be an integral piece in the mezzo-soprano’s repertoire. On this occasion, she celebrates her return to the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, with whom she collaborated in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony back in 2022. The name Suzuki also plays a memorable part in Vermeulen’s discography after the participation in the recording of Mozart’s C minor Mass under Masaaki Suzuki back in 2017, which won the coveted Gramophone Choral Award.

For the upcoming performance of the Requiem, which remained unfinished on the death of the composer, Masato Suzuki will conduct his own version, published in 2019. In his own words: "the purpose of this revised edition is entirely to search for further possibilities in performance, and it was not created to be the final edition, either from an academic point of view or from a practical, performance standpoint. With the release of this edition, we hope that new possibilities in the performance history of Mozart’s Requiem will be rediscovered."

Joanne Lunn, soprano
Olivia Vermeulen, mezzo-soprano
Nick Pritchard, tenor
Dominik Wörner, bass

Masato Suzuki, conductor
Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra
RIAS Kammerchor