This generously programmed disc provides excellent value and outstanding performances of both major and lesser-known masterpieces of French choral music. The Fauré Requiem has been recorded many times, and several excellent versions of the original orchestration are available on disc. This one is among them, owing to John Eliot Gardiner's experience and perfectionist mastery of details overlooked by less-successful choral conductors. The real bonus here is the inclusion of the popular but very difficult Debussy and Ravel chansons, and the rarely heard but eminently worthy little part songs by Saint-Saëns. These pieces are a lesson in how to achieve maximum effect with the simplest materials.
Little can be as momentous for a work as it's encounter with an extraordinary interpreter. And today - there's no doubt about it - Fauré has found his voice in that of Cyrille Dubois. A bright, clear timbre and impeccable diction undoubtedly contribute to the remarkable complicity that we witness, but it's secret lies above all perhaps in the French tenor's singular ability to convey an atmosphere, evoke an emotion, a feeling, a mood - in short, bring out all the poetic qualities of the music.
The poetic renewal embodied by Hugo, Baudelaire, Verlaine and so many others after them radically changed the musical landscape and propelled French art song into a true golden age. This tribute to Fauré, the supreme master of the mélodie, gains its radiance from Marc Mauillon’s ideally clear voice and Anne Le Bozec’s delicate pianism. The singer’s second ‘solo’ recording on harmonia mundi shows him just as much at home in Faurean word setting as in the text of Lambert’s Leçons de Ténèbres.