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DiscountDelight - Faure: Requiem and other choral music
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List Price: $17.99
Our Price: $11.82
Your Save: $ 6.17 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Collegium
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0040888010920
Label: Collegium
Manufacturer: Collegium
Publisher: Collegium
Release Date: 2000-02-29
Studio: Collegium
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: OK, I'm a sucker for the 1893 version
Comment: John Rutter made substantial changes to the previously most-performed version of the Faure Requiem when he recorded this. He went back to the version of 1893 to do so, rather than using the more famous, more heavily orchestrated later version. One difference is that the violins in the Sanctus are transposed up an octave on this CD compared to the way in which they were played in the later Requiem. I find this recording to be beautiful and timeless, and definitely not over-orchestrated.
To me, Faure's great contribution with the Requiem was that he showed a firm refusal to judge other people as well as compassion in the face of death. This went against the beliefs of the Catholic church at the time, which emphasized hellfire and brimstone, and Faure was heavily criticized for putting as little mention in as he could get away with regarding the Day of Judgement. This compassion shows in his work and makes it comforting rather than frightening. It has been called a "lullaby of death."
I also enjoy the other vocal pieces, particularly the Ave Maria and the Cantique de Jean Racine, which is probably familiar to many people who are not really aware of Faure's career. These songs have a pure, clear sound which is not ruined through excessive orchestration.
In my opinion, John Rutter did a fantastic job with this material, and it's one of my favorite CDs.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Life has been engulfed in time
Comment: This requiem represents a complete shift in the general tone of the requiem as a genre. The vision of life and death is impregnated with a feminine light, the light of the ocean softly illuminated by the sunshine of Normandy, of the Graceful Coast. The figure that stands behind the music, that accompanies the dead person into the grave is no longer the masculine Germanic death that punishes man, nor even the furious feminine French death that challenges man, but the soft and comforting figure of the mother Mary, the universal comforter who takes the hand of each one of us, as if we were crying lost children, to make us pass the dangerous door that leads beyond life. This Holy Mary for whom Fauré has written so many Ave Marias, is promising us the end of time and our introduction into an everlasting stormless, painless and noiseless world that represents the very positive vision of a real world that is the negative vision of life. Photography is not far away. Everyday life becomes a life of strife, struggle, noise, violence, war, speed, work, exploitation and alienation, all elements seen as negative, and death is the negation of it all, is the positive virtuality that has to become our reality overthere. It is thus in perfect agreement with the vision the impressionists introduced to defy photography and bring art beyond the blaring image of reality a photographer brings up with his machine. The eye of the artist goes beyond those crude colors and forms to find light and life in the depth of his retina. Fauré is the impressionist painter of death as the real life beyond the surface we have to contemplate and suffer everyday. In other words virtual is beautiful and real is dreadful. Happiness has to be found in virtuality and not in reality. Fauré is bergsonian, who sees eternity beyond the flow of time. Fauré is proustian, who sees life beyond the loss of memory. This explains the erasing of the Dies Irae because there is no anger any more in the ascent to the eternal memory of what does not exist yet. This is a requiem of timelessness and nightlessness.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan
Customer Rating:
Summary: Requiem- a masterpiece.
Comment: This exquisite collection has so many gorgeous songs that move me to tears. In Sanctus, the violin is so pure, so beautiful, its wrings my heart. This is real music, real art, crafted with such care, that it is a true privilege to hear it, not to mention sing it (which I have done, and I loved it). It is an encredible CD, and I would encourage anyone to buy it.
Lilly
Customer Rating: 
Summary: high quality but lacking emotion
Comment: One reviewer describes this as "no lack of sadness, bright, not gloomy, filled with sunshine"; another calls it "peaceful". I might go with peaceful. The quality is high and the recording is of interest for being more faithful to Faure's original, non-orchestral version, but I found the performance notably lacking in emotion. I would steer the reader toward the more deeply moving Naxos version (conductor: Jeremy Summerly), which is something of a gem at budget price.
Customer Rating:
Summary: bright requiem
Comment: This CD is a revelation. Between the subject matter and the genuinely somber music, Faure's Requiem is often recorded as in a gloom. Darkness is made to make do for profundity and melancholy for reflection. In this version, there is no lack of sadness, but also no lack of soaring voices declaring a deeper belief in a life beyond death. This Requiem is bright, not gloomy, filled with the sunshine of faith. I can not help thinking this is what Faure must have meant by the piece, and if not, it is what he should have meant.
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Editorial Reviews:
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John Rutter's groundbreaking research and subsequent performing edition of Fauré's beloved Requiem has enabled us to hear the work as the composer originally intended. His first version of the piece included only a chamber orchestra with lower strings, harp, timpani, and organ. Four years later, Fauré added two movements and slightly expanded the orchestration. This is the version that Rutter and his inimitable Cambridge Singers perform here-- and it's a glorious revelation, especially if the only Fauré Requiem you've heard is that for full orchestra, which the composer himself neither created nor approved. Rutter and his singers give us a wonderfully sumptuous yet detailed performance that benefits tremendously from the newly realized clarity of inner lines and from the richly colored orchestral textures. --David Vernier
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