- Release Info -------------------------------------------------------------- -
Artist: Martin Pearlman and the Boston Baroque
Album: Cherubini: Requiem
Label: Telarc
Playtime: 50:34 min
Genre: Classical
URL: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=43:148394
Rip date: 2008-05-28
Street date: 2007-00-00
Size: 68.40 MB
Type: Normal
Quality: 179 kbps / 4410kHz / Joint Stereo
- Release Notes ------------------------------------------------------------- -
In the early nineteenth century, Luigi Cherubini's Requiem in C minor (1816)
was often compared to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem in D minor, which
preceded it by 15 years. In our own time, the recordings of these works by
Martin Pearlman and the Boston Baroque afford us an opportunity to consider
them side by side; because both are historically informed performances on
authentic instruments, of works that are similar in substance and form,
comparisons are reasonable. Of course, the performances in both cases are
extraordinary, and this 2007 Telarc presentation of Cherubini's Requiem has
exceptional reproduction in common with the 1995 Mozart recording, in both
the standard-issue CD and this hybrid SACD. Pearlman and his ensemble are
especially sensitive in sacred repertoire, and the expressions of both the
choir and the orchestra approach the sublime. However, there is an important
difference between the Mozart work and the Cherubini, insofar as the Requiem
in D minor is a bona fide masterpiece, while the Requiem in C minor is merely
a respectable piece of late Classical (or early Romantic) orthodoxy.
Cherubini was not exploring new musical ground in his Requiem -- composed as
a memorial to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, it had to be conservative in
style -- and the influences of church and monarchy are undeniably felt in
this work's austerity and stiff respectability. Also, where Mozart's vocal
soloists give a distinctly personal and comforting quality to his mass for
the dead, Cherubini instead uses the choir tutti throughout, perhaps to
eliminate the expression of individuality. Cherubini's music is at times
impressive and interesting -- sometimes even operatic in character -- but it
is less than moving or spiritually uplifting, and even this committed and
skilled rendition fails to make it seem much more than utilitarian church
music. Framed by Ludwig van Beethoven's soothing Elegiac Song, Op. 118, and
Cherubini's theatrically grim Marche funΦbre, the Requiem in C minor comes
across as a minor choral work that deserves to be heard occasionally, but
which should not be ranked as highly as Mozart's swan song.
- Track List ---------------------------------------------------------------- -
01. Beethoven - Elegiac Song (Elegischer Gesang), Op.118 ( 5:49)
02. Requiem in C Minor: Introit and Kyrie ( 7:31)
03. Requiem in C Minor: Graduale ( 1:17)
04. Requiem in C Minor: Sequence: Dies Irae ( 7:53)
05. Requiem in C Minor: Offertory: Domine Jesu Christe ( 5:54)
06. Requiem in C Minor: Offertory: Hostias ( 6:47)
07. Requiem in C Minor: Sanctus and Benedictus ( 1:13)
08. Requiem in C Minor: Pie Jesu ( 3:26)
09. Requiem in C Minor: Agnus Dei ( 5:30)
10. Cherubini - Marche Funebre ( 5:14)
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