Stabat Mater And Requiem

For a few decades now, Fritz Reiner's recording of the Verdi Requiem (one of his rare stereo recordings not made for RCA, and not with the Chicago Symphony) has lurked in the shadowy corners of Decca's catalog, appearing only on budget LPs and CD two-fers. Now, in its latest incarnation as part of the Decca Legends series, it may at last get the recognition it deserves. Reiner's rendition has several things going for it, not least of which are the superstar soprano and tenor soloists.

This release presents music associated with the Renaissance master Josquin Des Prez, a composer who towers above all others in the first part of the sixteenth century. Numerous works were attributed to him that have now been proven to be by his contemporaries and successors, including the central work on this recording, Jean Richafort’s expansive and beautiful Requiem. It is performed with affecting clarity by the all-male vocal group Cinquecento, whose many previous discs of Renaissance repertoire for Hyperion have garnered the highest critical praise.

These CDs have been issued by Decca in their "Legendary Performances" series; the recording was originally issued on the Ace of Diamonds label in 1960. Fritz Reiner belonged to that era of revered authoritarian conductors (including Toscanini, Klemperer and Beecham) who dominated the pre-Second World War orchestral scene. His reputation was achieved very largely through his interpretations of Wagner opera in America and Europe and his orchestral directorships in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Chicago. This recording of the Verdi Requiem came towards the very end of his conducting career and only 3 years before his death.

This is a recording of rarely heard choral works by Verdi, performed by all-Italian forces – the Orchestra and Chorus of Teatre Regio in Turin, with the soloists Barbara Frittoli and Francesco Meli, under the conductor Gianandrea Noseda, an exclusive Chandos artist – for totally idiomatic results.

This religious masterpiece, composed in memory of the great Italian novelist Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873), has themes even more cosmic than any in Verdi's other operas: life and death, heaven and hell, the Christian vision of humanity's redemption, the end of the world, and the last judgment. Verdi's music rises to the tremendous demands of this subject matter; it is music of grandeur, guilt, terror, and consolation, with a breadth of vision and an intensity of feeling unique in the composer's work and in religious music. John Eliot Gardiner's is the first recording made with period instruments, a kind of performance that some musiclovers still dismiss as dilettantism, more concerned with musicological correctness than feeling and communication.