Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2014 Choral category winner! Purely on grounds of performance alone, this is one of the finest Mozart Requiems of recent years. John Butt brings to Mozart the microscopic care and musicological acumen that have made his Bach and Handel recordings so thought-provoking and satisfying.
A prize student of music theorist Simon Sechter and a good friend of Beethoven and Schubert, German composer Franz Lachner was appointed Royal Court Conductor in Munich in 1836 where he directed the Court Theater, the Court Church, and the Court Concert Hall for with pride, dedication, and professionalism for the next 33 years. However, the death of his patron Maximilian II and the ascension of Ludwig II, avid patron of Richard Wagner, effectively ended Lachner's career. Though he lived another 23 years, Lachner's music was rarely if ever performed.
Peter Schreier brought a lifetime's experience as a singer to the conductor's rostrum in his accounts of Mozart's Requiem, Coronation Mass, and motet Ave verum Corpus. The performances were recorded in Dresden between 1982 and 1992. A major plus is highly disciplined singing by the Leipzig Radio Chorus, whose clarity of diction and finely balanced ensemble adds much to your enjoyment of these performances; they're heard on their own account in the motet that concludes this reissue. The Requiem (in Süssmayr's completion) is powerfully and urgently driven.
This is an excellent rendition of Dvorjak's Requiem. The Choral group have excellent diction and are sensitive to the light and shade required to bring our the meaning of the words. The Orchestra too contributes to the unity of the work. The Soloists are first class with beautiful voices. the conductor is to be congratulated for his skill in bring the three sections-chorus, soloists and orchestra-together to effectively recreate this wonderful work.
Bruno Walter is a conductor who knew how to stamp the works he conducted and recorded, especially those from the religious repertory, with the seal of his warm poetic sensitivity and his radiant humanity. Through these scores, he manages to communicate his vision to us, and, without ever forcing an already strong text, without false sentiment or gratuitous effect, he leaves us room for a more personal interpretation of the music. Brahms composed his Requiem at the beginning of his career, at under thirty-five- the age at which Mozart died (this means that both composers wrote their Requiems at about the same age).
«A mes yeux, cet enregistrement du requiem est incontounable, la sérénité qui s'en dégage, l'équilibre général, la qualité de l'interprétation tant vocale qu'instrumentale en font une version de premier plan, même si le choix est vaste, ma préférence est toujours restée pour cette version.»
If I had to pick only a handful of discs to single out as being of extreme worth to me personally - this would be one of them. There are just some works out there where the composer was inspired to record something truly extraordinary. This is one such work and this recording is the best that I know of. I have also spent a lot of time with the Fournet, Rotterdam recording Fauré: Requiem; Pavane; Pelléas et Mélisande . And while I think that is a fine recording, this ASMF recording with Marriner is a cut above. The playing is sensuous and refined, the tempos are perfect to convey the feeling of the music. This recording has lifted me up at some very low times in my life, and never ceases to convey power, wonder, and awe.
On the request of the Empress Maria Theresa in 1803, he composed a Requiem in c minor. Although the compositional style of Eybler's requiem is clearly oriented toward Albrechtsberger, Haydn, and, of course, Mozart, its rich orchestration (double choir and lavish wind instrumentation) and highly original formal design attest to an individual expressive style clearly distinguishing it from the run-of-the-mill sacred works littering those times. The regard in which this work was held no doubt helped Eybler receive his appointment as deputy Hofkapellmeister under Salieri in 1804.