Fauré: Requiem etc (CD)

“Simon Keenlyside is the ideal baritone soloist” Gramophone

Composers: Gabriel Fauré, Pierre Villette, Jean Roger-Ducasse
Conductor: David Hill
Performers
Nancy Argenta
Stephen Farr
Simon Keenlyside
Kenan Burrows
Bournemouth Sinfonietta
Winchester Cathedral Choir
Label: Virgin Classics (re-issue)
Code: VM5619942
Released: April 8, 2002 (originally released in 1998)
Number of discs: 1
ASIN: B00005RFSH

Track Listings

Gabriel Fauré
1. Requiem
Bournemouth Sinfonietta / Winchester Cathedral Choir with Nancy Argenta, Stephen Farr, Simon Keenlyside

2. Cantique de Jean Racine
Bournemouth Sinfonietta / Winchester Cathedral Choir with Stephen Farr

Pierre Villette
3. O salutaris hostia
Winchester Cathedral Choir
4. O magnum mysterium
Winchester Cathedral Choir

Jean Roger-Ducasse
5. Trois Motets
Winchester Cathedral Choir with Stephen Farr, Kenan Burrows
6. Trois Motets
Winchester Cathedral Choir with Stephen Farr, Kenan Burrows
7. Trois Motets
Winchester Cathedral Choir with Stephen Farr, Kenan Burrows

Notes The Fauré Pie Jesu, Libera me and In paradisum can also be found on the 1000 years of Sacred Music CD set. Click here for details: 1000 Years of Sacred Music; Various, Virgin Classics, 2005

What the critics say

Reviewed by John Steane for Gramophone, March 2003.

“…The Requiem particularly wants a choir with good sopranos (or trebles, as here) and tenors, and Winchester is strong in both. The alto-tenor passage at the start of the “Offertoire” is beautifully done. Nancy Argenta sustains the “Pie Jesu” well, and Simon Keenlyside is the ideal baritone soloist. There is sensitive playing too, the brass fully effective (this is the 1893 version, edited by Rutter) without too much assertion, and the subtle instrumentation of the Agnus Dei is beautifully brought out. In the unaccompanied motets which complete the programme the choir deploy their customary intelligence and fine tone, their outstanding treble soloist, Kenan Burrows, doing excellent work for Jean Roger-Ducasse whose three Motets (1911) move, each in turn, to a well-placed climax. These ‘fill-in’ pieces might even have gone so far as to convert a somewhat mixed report into a more decisively favourable one, but I think on the whole one is better off with Faure’s Messe basse (Pople), Durufle’s motets (Marlow) or Saint-Saens, Debussy and Ravel (Gardiner). “