Even now that the shrouds of mystery and intrigue that enveloped the evolution of Mozart’s Requiem (so brilliantly sensationalised by Peter Shaffer in Amadeus) have been lifted, the master’s last, incomplete work still projects a certain musical mystique in the face of death.

That mystique captivated the young Jordi Savall, who in 1955 at the age of 14 first heard the work being rehearsed at his local conservatoire. The now octogenarian early music figurehead has decided to record the work (in its classic completion by Joseph Leopold Eybler and Franz Xavier Süssmayr) again, having already laid down a forward-looking interpretation around the time of the Mozart bicentenary in 1991.

Savall’s conception of the work some three decades on remains much the same, even if this new recording lacks the signature voice of many of Savall’s projects, his late wife Monserrat Figueras as well as the distinguished polish of legendary German tenor Gerd Türk.

Still, Savall has lost none of his galvanising energy in the intervening years. The Sturm und Drang elements are...