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Bach, Berlioz, Verdi, Mahler: Mute Sighs, Silent Laments / Saxon Staatskapelle Dresden
Profil · Jan 2022CD$32.99 -
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SaleDi Vittorio: Sinfonias No 1 "isolation" And No 2 "lost Innocence" / Chamber Orchestra Of New York
Naxos · Jul 2011CD$19.99$13.99 -
Berio: Sinfonia, Concerto for Two Pianos / Swingle Singers, New York Philharmonic
Sony Masterworks · May 2013CD$17.99 -
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Antonio Pappano - Complete Santa Cecilia Symphonic,Concertante & Sacred Music Recordings
WARNER CLASSICS · Aug 2024CD$100.49 -
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Verdi: Messa da Requiem / Abbado, Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini Coro del Teatro Regio di Parma
Dynamic · Apr 2021Blu-Ray$36.99 -
Danielpour: An American Requiem / St. Clair, Blythe, Et Al
Reference Recordings · Feb 2002CD$18.99 -
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![Verdi: Messa da Requiem / Luisi, Philharmonia Zurich [Blu-ray]](//arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/3729577.jpg?v=1786836374&width=400)
Verdi: Messa da Requiem / Luisi, Philharmonia Zurich [Blu-ray]
Accentus Music · Oct 2017Vinyl$53.99 -
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Franchetti: Symphony - Wolf-Ferrari: Sinfonia da camera
VERDI: MESSA DA REQUIEM
Bach, Berlioz, Verdi, Mahler: Mute Sighs, Silent Laments / Saxon Staatskapelle Dresden
The musicians of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden were committed to their tradition of staging an annual commemorative concert even under these difficult circumstances and decided to organize a Memento Mori to mark this date that is inscribed in the annals of city history. The program comprised a small ensemble conducted by an expert for Baroque music and two ideally suited voices for the format. The concert was recorded for the Deutschlandfunk Kultur station and broadcast as a message of peace in the world. There were fewer than ten people in the auditorium of the Semperoper, all socially distanced and listening raptly to this unique event. Ultimately this was the first sign of life, the first musical greeting from the orchestra in a concert not open to the public after months of inactivity due to the pandemic. When, barely a year ago, Arnold Schoenberg’s “Gurre-Lieder” (featuring more than 300 performers on stage to a full house!) were performed and produced for album shortly afterwards (Edition Staatskapelle Vol. 50, PH 20052), no one would have predicted that this sonorous performance would be followed by a long phase of silence. May the present recording serve as testimony in the form of a contemporary sign of a cultural reawakening.
Review
With this latest release entitled Stumme Seufzer, stille Klagen (Mute Sighs, Silent Laments) the Edition Staatskapelle Dresden series has reached volume 51. Contained here is a pair of J.S. Bach’s greatest church cantatas from the 2021 anniversary concert held in memory of the destruction of Dresden in 1945. The themes of chosen cantatas are death and hope of salvation seen from the standpoint of their being a gateway to everlasting life.
The city of Dresden was destroyed by three days of Allied bombing raids, in February 1945. It is now an annual tradition for the Sachsische Staatskapelle Dresden to mark the anniversary date with a commemorative concert with no interval and or applause during the performance or at the conclusion. For the 2021 memorial concert, the Staatskapelle Dresden was keen to maintain the tradition and went ahead while observing coronavirus regulations – specifically, without a public audience and players socially distanced players on stage.
Dorothee Mields sings Bach’s original 1714 version of Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut a solo cantata for soprano with obbligato parts for oboe and viola. As the cantata begins with a recitative and aria, Herreweghe has chosen to start the score with the Sinfonia from the church cantata Weinen, klagen, sorgen, zagen (Weeping, lamenting, sorrow, sighing) BWV 12. Such an exquisite lament, the aria Stumme Seufzer, stille Klagen (Mute Sighs, Silent Laments) is sung sublimely by Mields, the overall effect heightened by the accompanying oboe part played by Rafael Sousa. In the following short chorale: Ich, dein betrübtes Kind (I, your troubled child) one senses that Mields is living the words of the penitent sinner while the viola part played by Sebastian Herberg is very much her equal.
Recorded in the outstanding acoustic of Semperoper, the sound has clarity and first-class balance. The second ‘bonus’ CD contains extracts from three huge works for chorus and orchestra appropriate to the theme of death and hope of salvation by Verdi, Berlioz and Mahler, all recorded and previously released for the Edition Staatskapelle Dresden series on Profil. Included on the ‘bonus’ CD are the interviews that Stefan Lang held in German with Philippe Herreweghe and with violist Andreas Schreiber.
Verdi completed his Messa da Requiem in 1874...[the] three chosen extracts, the sections: Requiem, Dies irae and Tuba mirum are from the recording conducted by Christian Thielemann at the Memorial Concert held on 13th February 2014 in the Semperoper, Dresden.
Berlioz wrote his Grande Messe des Morts a massive work using a huge orchestra and choral forces, in 1837...[the] recording here is the Dies irae by Sir Colin Davis, conducting the Memorial Concert given on the 13th February 1994 at the Kreuzkirche, Dresden.
The chosen extract [from Mahler's Symphony no. 2 "Resurrection" [is] the Finale...part of the recording conducted by Bernard Haitink at the Memorial Concert on the 13th February 1995 in the Semperoper.
A valuable feature of this Edition Staatskapelle Dresden series, a bilingual edition in German and English, is the scrupulously produced booklets, produced to a high standard[.] These are exemplary performances. From first to last note, I am totally engaged by Herreweghe’s rewarding accounts of two of J.S. Bach’s greatest church cantatas.
--MusicWeb International (Michael Cookson)
Di Vittorio: Sinfonias No 1 "isolation" And No 2 "lost Innocence" / Chamber Orchestra Of New York
DI VITTORIO Overtura Respighiana 1. Symphony No. 2, “Lost Innocence 1.” Ave Maria 2. Symphony No. 1, “Isolation 1.” Clarinet Sonata No. 1 3 • 1,2 Salvatore Di Vittorio, cond; 2 Respighi Choir; 3 Benjamin Baron (cl); 1 New York “Ottorino Respighi” CO • NAXOS 8572333 (56:52)
RESPIGHI Aria for Strings. Violin Concerto in A. Suite for Strings. Rossiniana: Suite • Salvatore Di Vittorio, cond; Laura Marzadori (vn); New York “Ottorino Respighi” CO • NAXOS 8572332 (77:32)
If Palermo-born Salvatore Di Vittorio (b.1967) is new to you (as he is to me), based on these two Naxos releases you might be justified in thinking he’s a third-generation relation to Italian composer Ottorino Respighi. That’s because as a conductor, Di Vittorio leads an ensemble he founded and named “Ottorino Respighi” Chamber Orchestra of New York in a program of works by Respighi. As an arranger, he revised and/or completed three of the works heard on the second of these two discs. And as a composer, Di Vittorio has been hailed as a “lyrical romantic … following in the footsteps of Respighi.” Though a reading of Di Vittorio’s biography on his website (salvatoredivittorio.com/bio.html) discloses no direct link to the former composer, it appears that Respighi is near and dear to Di Vittorio’s heart.
In a sense, you might say that in at least one of his compositions, Overtura Respighiana , Di Vittorio has channeled Respighi to write music that the real Respighi might have written himself, for the piece is a devilishly delightful concoction that plays on Respighi’s Rossiniana and Pines of Rome , fusing them with references to Di Vittorio’s own music, to create a kind of freshly minted Boutique fantasque.
The Symphony No. 2, titled “Lost Innocence,” on the other hand, does not, as far as I can tell, quote anything by Respighi, but the brilliant swatches of instrumental color Di Vittorio weaves into and through this striking musical tapestry is reminiscent of Respighi’s way with the orchestral palette. Di Vittorio tells us that the work was inspired by the tragedy of the Yugoslav civil wars in the late 1990s. Its four movements—“Requiem for a Child,” “Dance of Tears,” “Childheart,” and “Elegy: Marcia Funebre”—at least up until the finale, reflect a calm that is neither quiet nor peaceful, but one that builds toward a shattering, tragic ending.
The Ave Maria for a cappella women’s chorus is one of Di Vittorio’s conservatory works, written in 1995 (revised in 1998) after graduating from the Manhattan School of Music. At first it struck my ear as fairly dissonant, sounding almost like it could have been written by Penderecki, Lutos?awski, or Vasks, but as the piece unfolded, emerging from the harmonic counterpoint were passages that, with just a few minor adjustments to the voice-leading, sounded as if they might have come from a cappella moments in Verdi’s Requiem. Di Vittorio confirms that impression in his booklet note, stating that a number of influences run through the piece, from Palestrina and Monteverdi to Verdi, and that “in particular, certain resemblances may be traced to Verdi’s choral Ave Maria .” The effects of Di Vittorio’s piece are quite arresting, simultaneously stark and austere yet illuminated from within by a shimmering light that leads to a most meltingly beautiful cadential Amen.
The Symphony No. 1, titled “Isolation,” dates to one year before the Ave Maria but was revised in 1999. No borrowings from Respighi appear in this score either, yet his spirit hovers over it in the luminous divided string writing and exquisite chiaroscuro effects. This is a strings-only work, and according to Di Vittorio one of its influences was Vivaldi’s seldom-performed Sinfonia al Santo Sepolcro , RV 169, one of Vivaldi’s most harmonically tortured works, written in a highly chromatic idiom intended to represent Christ’s pain and suffering. For Di Vittorio, the “Isolation” Symphony is meant to depict man’s alienation from himself and his fellow man. If you were to listen to the piece without knowing that, I’m not sure you would necessarily pick up specifically on that theme. The music is sad, to be sure, even brooding, but more than once it put me in mind of Barber’s Adagio for Strings , a piece that is somehow uplifting in its tragedy.
The Di Vittorio-as-composer CD closes with another work revised in 1998, the Clarinet Sonata No. 1. Not reflected in its title is the fact that it’s a piece for unaccompanied clarinet, which is a bit of a challenge for both composer and performer, considering that a solo wind instrument, unlike a violin or cello, can’t make its own harmony by playing double-stops or chords. But I suppose if Bach and Debussy could write for unaccompanied flute, there’s no reason the solo capabilities of other wind instruments shouldn’t be explored. Di Vittorio notes that he drew inspiration and advice for the work from his father, Giuseppe, who was a clarinetist. Di Vittorio claims to have been influenced by Verdi, Brahms, Berlioz, and elements of French Baroque dance, though these elements are not easily discerned due to the nature of the music’s syntax and style, which consists largely of loosely connected contrasting phrases that never quite seem to coalesce into an identifiable whole. Nonetheless, Benjamin Baron’s very accomplished clarinet playing invites further listening and offers a promise that there is more to this piece than meets the ear on first hearing.
Critics can be a cruel lot—I know because I’m one of them—and there are those who will say, and already have, that music like this being written today is irrelevant. That’s a strong sentiment, for sure, but nowhere near as judgmental as someone like Pierre Boulez would be. He is quoted as having said that composers who write music like this simply don’t exist, prompting an acquaintance of mine to describe Boulez as “the Dr. Mengele of France.” With one wave of his hand, off you go to the gas chamber. My attitude, as expressed on a number of past occasions, is that beautiful music is beautiful music, regardless of when it’s written, and Di Vittorio proves himself with this CD to be a composer of beautiful music extraordinaire. I strongly recommend this release to you for many hours of listening pleasure.
The second of the two entries consists entirely of music by Respighi, though Di Vittorio has had a hand in the realization of three of the four of the works as heard on the disc. I’m not sure just how seriously Respighi was ever taken by critics and the academic elite, but thanks to a small number of works—primarily his Roman trilogy, the Ancient Airs and Dances suites, and La Boutique fantasque —he came to enjoy considerable exposure and popularity, especially in the U.S. Toscanini premiered the third number of the Roman trilogy, Feste Romane , with the New York Philharmonic in 1929, and then went on to record the piece for RCA twice, once in 1942 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and a second time with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1949, adding the Fountains of Rome in 1951 and the Pines of Rome in 1953. Toscanini wasn’t the only one to climb aboard the Respighi bandwagon. Mengelberg premiered the composer’s Toccata for Piano and Orchestra with the New York Philharmonic in 1928, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra commissioned Respighi’s Metamorphoseon for its 50th anniversary in 1931.
Yet of Respighi’s nearly 200 scores—among which are nine operas, five ballets, several concertos, quite a few chamber works, and a considerable volume of vocal and choral numbers—a good deal of it is unrecorded and rarely, if ever, performed. The reasons seem to be twofold. First, the critics and opinion-makers, while acknowledging the composer’s gift for colorful orchestration and pictorial illusionism, regarded the music as “derivative,” “cinematic,” and even “vulgar,” by which I prefer to think they meant lacking in substance and depth rather than tawdry and tasteless. The truth of the matter is that there is nothing any more cinematic or “vulgar,” if you choose to use that word, about Respighi’s The Fountains of Rome , written in 1916, than there is about Bloch’s Schelomo written a year earlier. But the second, and perhaps more serious, criticism Respighi faced—though it was largely unjustified—was that he was a supporter of Mussolini’s fascist regime. Evidence seems to suggest that Respighi didn’t have a political bone in his body, but it may have been his very passivity and silence that were damning.
The 24-year-old Respighi began work on a violin concerto in 1903. Only the first two movements were completed; the third remained in a piano reduction with just a few measures orchestrated. After analyzing the score, Di Vittorio made enhancements to the orchestration of the first two movements and completed the third using material from the other movements. Di Vittorio’s completion was premiered in New York in 2010. I note a 1994 recording of the concerto on a Bongiovani CD, but it is only of Respighi’s original first two movements. The current performances of both the concerto and the Aria for Strings, transcribed by Di Vittorio, are world premiere recordings. The concerto, which owes much to Vivaldi and early Mendelssohn, inhabits a world of lyrical sunshine that plays on the senses like a fresh breeze bearing scents of an Italian vineyard in spring. Thanks to the efforts of Di Vittorio, and the capable hands and sensitive voice of violinist Laura Marzadori, this romantically expressive score is brought to us complete for the first time.
The even earlier 1901 Aria, Respighi’s salute to his Italian heritage by way of Frescobaldi, Corelli, and, again, Vivaldi, found its way into the composer’s Suite in G Major for Strings and Organ. Di Vittorio makes of it a lovely air for string orchestra. Both the Aria and the Suite were revised or edited to prepare the very first printed editions (score and parts) of each score. Up until now, only manuscript copies of the score and parts existed for both works. Beyond this, Di Vittorio then made slight adjustments to the Aria to make it suitable for not only string orchestra but string quintet, in order to promote Respighi’s music in academic settings, such as conservatories and music colleges.
The booklet does not explain to what extent Di Vittorio “revised” Respighi’s Suite for Strings, cataloged as P 41. The piece is a six-movement suite in Baroque style that anticipates Respighi’s later and very popular Ancient Airs and Dances.
Six years after Respighi visited Rossini’s collection of piano pieces titled Les Riens (“Trifles,” aka “Sins of my Old Age”) for his ballet La Boutique fantasque in 1919, he returned to mine the mother lode again in 1925 for his Rossiniana Suite. It is given here in unaltered form and in a delightful performance by Di Vittorio’s “Ottorino Respighi” Chamber Orchestra of New York. As one of Respighi’s more popular works, there is of course serious competition in the suite, not least among which is a classic 1967 recording with Ansermet (one of his last) and the Suisse Romande Orchestra.
The current Naxos release, in addition to excellent performances and recording, offers to the Respighi fan a combination of never-before-heard music and works in never-before-heard transcriptions by Salvatore Di Vittorio. Strongly recommended.
FANFARE: Jerry Dubins
Berio: Sinfonia, Concerto for Two Pianos / Swingle Singers, New York Philharmonic
"[Sinfonia] is a wild, four-movement work and shows the new direction music is taking. Gone are the strict constructions and parameters of serialism. Instead there is a concentration on pure sound... With the Swingle Singers grouped around microphones, breaking the language (French and English, mostly) into bits of sound components, and with the orchestra often blasting away with fortissimo chords that contained all 12 notes of the scale, there was not a dull moment anywhere... It is one of the musics of the future." -- Harold C. Schonberg, The New York Times
"...the Swingle Singers perform this music as if their lives depended on it. Sinfonia becomes a piece of musical theater on that recording..." -- Raymond Tuttle, www.classical.net
Antonio Pappano - Complete Santa Cecilia Symphonic,Concertante & Sacred Music Recordings
Sorensen, Ockeghem: Requiem / Hillier, Ars Nova Copenhagen
R E V I E W:
Shoots straight into the soul and lingers long in the mind.
This is a fascinating and highly successful project. Without going into the kind of detail which the booklet notes give us, this is Johannes Ockeghem´s Missa pro defunctis, integrated with newly composed movements by Bengt Sørensen to create what is, if not an entirely new piece, certainly a very new and fresh way of connecting the new in the old, with the old in the new. This is an extension of Paul Hillier’s more frequent combining of contemporary with early music in his programming, and here he has brought in Bengt Sørensen to complete ‘the bits which are missing’ in Ockeghem’s work.
Ockeghem’s Missa is full of moments which can wrong-foot you into thinking that you are hearing something contemporary. Harmonic shifts and quasi-romantic melodic lines abound, and just listen to some of those startling female-only passages in the Kyrie. The Graduale flows from Sørensen’s Lacrimosa as if from the same fearlessly expressive source, and there are moments in the Offertorium which are truly overwhelming.
Sørensen’s contributions are idiomatically sensitive and integrate by way of atmosphere, but are by no means a soft-pedalled imitation of ancient style. The opening Responsorium has plenty of reassuring parallel intervals and open harmonies, but immediately alerts the ear to what is to come, with close harmonies and strange dissonances which have inner resolution, but no ultimate cadence. The central Recordare Jesu pie in the Sequentia is one of those impossibly melting creations which make your hairs stand up with some kind of prehensile spiritual angst. Separated by plainchant, the first two minutes of the following Lacrimosa is truly beautiful: a moment of suspended time where the tears fall, but never reach the ground. There are moments of restrained drama here and in the Benedictus, where vibrato is used as a textural effect, making the air itself ring like a Tibetan bowl. The entire Requiem cycle closes with Sørensen’s In Paradisum, is the most extensive and in some ways the most far reaching, as the booklet notes describe, “with cluster-like chordal effects that are thinned out, recondensed and break like waves against each other.”
All of the texts are printed in the booklet in Latin, English and Danish, revealing a contribution from Dylan Thomas in the Responsorium: Memento mei Deus: “Hourly I sigh,/for all things are leaf-like/and cloud-like. Flowerly I die/for all things are grief-like/and shroud-like.” There is a diagram at the back of the booklet which shows the position of singers and microphones, with a more conventional choir setting for the Ockeghem, and singers all around the venue for Sørensen’s work. In stereo this effect is not so very noticeable, though there are enough added dimensions and everything remains perfectly balanced. With a surround set-up the effect is quite magical. I searched high and low for the name of the church where this was recorded, but even un-named this is a perfect acoustic for such unaccompanied vocal scoring. This is one of those recordings for which you close your eyes and give yourself entirely over to a very rich musical experience indeed. Paul Hillier’s Ars Nova Copenhagen is a remarkable collection of vocalists for which this work is tailor-made, and the music is brought to life in a way which shoots straight into the soul and lingers long in the mind.
-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International
Jan Zach: Requiem Solemne; Vesperae De Beata Virgine
Brahms: A German Requiem
MESSA DA REQUIEM
MOZART: REQUIEM
Pigovat: Holocaust Requiem & Poem of Dawn
BRAHMS: Deutches Requiem (Ein), Op. 45
Carl Rutti: Requiem / David Hill, Et Al
RÜTTI Requiem • David Hill, cond; Olivia Robinson (sop); Edward Price (bar); Bach Ch; Jane Watts (org); Southern Snf • NAXOS 8.572317 (55:02)
The music of Swiss composer Carl Rütti (b. 1949) is not particularly well known in America. Though many CDs devoted to his music have been released in Europe on small labels, this internationally distributed Naxos release should help to bring his work to wider and extremely well-deserved attention. Rütti’s choral music is the most-performed part of his output, and his pieces have developed a following particularly in England where a number of significant choruses (especially the Cambridge Voices and the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge) have featured his choral music in high profile contexts.
Rütti’s Requiem is an extended work for soprano and baritone soloists, double chorus, strings, harp, and organ. He uses the traditional Latin text and, unlike a number of recent composers, he does not interpolate other texts into the narrative. The work was commissioned in 2005 by the Bach Choir of London, which performs it on this recording under the expert direction of David Hill. Though several of Rütti’s previous pieces (notably a terrific Pavane for violin and organ, which is quoted in the Requiem) had been inspired by death, he was initially somewhat reluctant to write a Requiem. However, after reflecting on personal losses, he decided (like many composers) that such a piece would be a meaningful way to express what he felt. The result is an absolutely magnificent work, and the best new Requiem setting of the many that I have heard in recent years.
Though there is a definite “British choral” influence on Rütti’s style, there are also Eastern European and Baltic characteristics that all combine to produce his personal voice. The resulting blend produces a truly wonderful mix of the practical melodic and modal character of much British music, and the poignant mysticism of many Baltic composers. The work begins and ends evocatively with an unaccompanied soprano solo, which the composer intends to represent the soul “alone before God.” Particular highlights of the work include the transcendently beautiful choral writing in the mostly unaccompanied Introitus that follows the opening soprano solo. The powerful and urgent Kyrie is extremely memorable. The most extended movement is the central Offertorium, which is packed with spine-tingling climaxes and textures. A memorable recurring motive throughout the whole Requiem is a sequence of shifting chords with false relations on the word “Jerusalem”; it is particularly glorious.
The common danger with Requiem settings is that the overall quiet mood of the text causes there to be far too much slow music; and when there is occasionally something fast and powerful (think Dies irae ), it ends up being earth-shattering. Rütti intentionally avoided a Dies irae because it did not fit with his beliefs about God. However, through a remarkable variety of texture and mood, Rütti manages to avoid this fatigue entirely. In the service of musical variety and dramatic shape, he ends up making some choices that other composers rarely do: the Kyrie, for example, is dramatic and powerful. Likewise, the main statement of the concluding “In paradisum” is thrillingly exciting and forms a major final climax to the work. The overall result is a perfectly balanced piece.
Perhaps what is most impressive to me about Rütti’s piece is how much genuine musical interest and variety he creates, despite the small forces. In terms of the creative spirit (though only rarely the actual sound of the music), James MacMillan’s seminal early pieces, such as Seven Last Words , are called to mind. In recent years, MacMillan’s large-scale works tend to use enormous orchestral palates, which are very appealing; however, it’s not nearly as difficult to create a lot of color with so many resources at one’s disposal.
The performance and recorded sound are excellent. Though I was somewhat “jaded” upon receiving the disc to see yet another new Latin Requiem by a contemporary composer, Rütti’s superb piece completely won me over. I cannot say enough in praise of this work, which is one of the finest Requiem settings of our time; I am absolutely convinced it will join the great ones from the past. It is a disc to which I will return frequently, and is Want List material, without doubt.
FANFARE: Carson Cooman
Verdi: Messa da Requiem / Abbado, Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini Coro del Teatro Regio di Parma
This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.
Also available on standard DVD
Giuseppi Verdi’s Messa da Requiem arose out of the composer’s admiration for the influential poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni, and as a response to the lack of appreciation shown to the writer in the press after the his death in 1873. The extraordinary character of Verdi’s Requiem confronts us with unanswerable questions, from the stormy and terrifying Dies irae, to consolatory and touching lyrical oases in which Verdi communicates liturgical texts in the most profound and expressive ways possible. This Teatro Regio di Parma production, which was performed open-air at the Parco Ducale of Parma, was dedicated to the victims of the Covid-19 pandemic and all the health workers engaged in the emergency. The mayor of Parma introduces the performance with a brief and touching speech and a minute’s silence. Conductor Roberto Abbado declared in an interview : “I think that Verdi felt the need to compose a sacred work to deal with some themes that ,as he got older, he felt very strongly about. They are themes that every human being sooner or later asks themselves. Verdi is not afraid to show that he fears death, and therefore his approach is extremely humble and human, showing…some of the frailties we all have. How does the Messa da Requiem end? It ends, in my opinion, with a huge question mark. Basically, I believe, Verdi, like many of us, cannot answer these questions. I, myself, cannot answer them.”
MESSA PER ROSSINI
![Verdi: Messa da Requiem / Luisi, Philharmonia Zurich [Blu-ray]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/3729577.jpg?v=1786836374&width=800)
Verdi: Messa da Requiem / Luisi, Philharmonia Zurich [Blu-ray]
With the "Messa da Requiem“, Christian Spuck brought one of Verdi’s key works to the stage. In a large-scale co-production by the Ballett and Oper Zurich, the German choreographer and director ventured to portray an unusual interpretation of Verdi’s funeral mass in his scenic choreographic production. 36 dancers, the choir and supplementary choir of the Opernhaus Zurich as well as four highly acclaimed soloists joined together under the direction of Fabio Luisi for 13 wide ranging scenes dedicated to one of the most fundamental themes of humanity. Christian Spuck does not seek a mere religious interpretation of the liturgical text. Instead, he is interested in focusing on people who, in their vulnerability and helplessness, are in the search for comfort. In poetic tableaux he deals with basic human emotions and focuses on the feelings of fear, rage, pain, sadness and the search for redemption.
![Verdi: Messa da Requiem / Luisi, Philharmonia Zurich [Blu-ray]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/3729577.jpg?v=1786836374&width=400)
Mozart: Requiem / Christophers, Watts, Pancella, Kennedy, Owens, Naim
Following the success of the Mozart Mass in C minor last year, CORO is delighted to announce the release of its second recording with Harry Christophers and the Handel and Haydn Society. Celebrated soloists Elizabeth Watts, Phyllis Pancella, Andrew Kennedy and Eric Owens joined Harry and the Society to record Mozart's Requiem live at Boston's Symphony Hall earlier this year. Mozart's final moments are reflected through this masterpiece of drama, intensity and depth. The mysterious circumstances surrounding the Requiem's commission (delivered by a 'messenger in black' who refused to reveal the identity of the person who had sent him), and the fact it was left incomplete by a dying Mozart, have ensured a continued fascination with the work. Completed by Mozart's colleague Süssmayr in 1792, the Requiem is one of Mozart's most popular and enduring works and one of the most enigmatic pieces of music ever composed. The CD will also feature Mozart's Ave verum corpus and the first recording on period instruments of his concert aria Per questa bella mano for bass voice and solo double bass obligato--a piece famous for its fiendishly difficult double bass part, performed superbly on this recording by Robert Nairn. Harry Christophers was appointed Artistic Director of Boston's internationally acclaimed Handel and Haydn Society in 2008. Founded in 1815, the Society is the oldest continuously performing arts organization in the U.S. and has given the American premieres of major works by Handel, Bach and Haydn, has won a Grammy Award, and will celebrate its Bicentennial in 2015. "Onstage, Christophers has what it takes to inspire the Society's fine musicians." The Wall Street Journal "...a commanding and compelling reading of an important if often overlooked monument in Mozart's musical development." Gramophone on COR16084: Mass in C minor
Rosner: Requiem, Op. 59 / Palmer, London Philharmonic Orchestra
Far from being a treatment of the usual Latin, the Requiem of the New York-based Arnold Rosner (1945–2013) sets spiritual and secular texts on death from a number of the world’s cultures, including Whitman, Villon, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a sutra from Zen Buddhism and the Jewish Kaddish. The work of a young man (Rosner was 28 when he wrote it), this Requiem is both monumental and wildly energetic – but it also encompasses passages of transcendent beauty. His musical language clothes the modal harmony and rhythm of pre-Baroque polyphony in rich Romantic colors, producing a style that is instantly recognizable and immediately appealing. Some of the music was first written for an aborted operatic treatment of Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal, where the main character plays chess with Death; in like spirit, Rosner’s Requiem is a major statement of human defiance in the face of mortality, even if its gentle closing pages bring uneasy acceptance.
REVIEW:
Arnold Rosner’s Requiem (1973), no exaggeration intended, is one of the great works of the 20th Century. Rosner (1945-2013) was a postmodernist at a time when modernism was unshakable in academic circles. He studied at SUNY/Buffalo—a notorious hotbed: the faculty laughed at him. They were wrong. They couldn’t deal with his love of Renaissance and early music (Dufay especially), his tonality and post-tonal language. Written when he was 28, the maturity and vision is striking. Inspiration for this work was triggered by his fascination with Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal. He wanted to adapt it for an opera, but Bergman refused permission. He began to write it anyway, and some of it appears in the Requiem. His sources include the New Testament, François Villon, the Kama Sutra, Whitman (When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed), Dante, the Kaddish, and the Dies Irae. All are set with sensitivity and profound musicality. The London Philharmonic is great, but Ms Hollis’s soprano is wobbly. Helpful notes by Rosner scholar Walter Simmons. Texts and translations. Don’t miss this.
-- American Record Guide (Allen Gimbel)
