Customer Reviews

Faure: Requiem and other choral music

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Gabriel Faure is hardly among the best known classical composers in the world, but this album makes a strong argument as to why he should be. John Rutter & the Cambridge singers never disappoint, and Faure's "Cantique de Jean Racine" and "Requiem" are magnificent, haunting, & peaceful. A must have for any lover of choral music or anyone just "browsing", looking for something different.

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.

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

This Collegium COLCD 109 is a later release of the Collegium COLCD 101 which I purchased circa 1985 after reading glowing reviews in Grammophone magazine. COLCD 101 is labeled Stereo/Digital. COLCD 109 is labeled Stereo/DDD. Is it a re-mastering? Liner notes don't say, but the new version provides noticeable improvements in vividness and clarity.

The release of COLCD 101 was a watershed event. John Rutter had questioned conventional performance versions of Faure's Requiem, those which used full symphony orchestras and Wagnerian-like soloists. Yes, it is a requiem, but Faure's ideas are very different than those found in, say, Verdi's Requiem. Instead of hellfire and damnation, Faure evokes serenity, peace and love. Rutter's historical research proved that Faure intended for his work to be performed in small, intimate settings where the orchestra and choir would be minimal and, maybe, use boy sopranos. Rutter's CD of the historical, 1893, version is like an expert restoration of an old painting where a century's grime is wiped away and the work is newly revealed in it's original beauty.

A 1990's CD of the 1893 version exists on Naxos 8.55076S by Jeremy Summerly and the Oxford Camerata. It, too, is beautiful and of similar performance quality, though conducted at a slightly slower tempo. I find Rutter's version more "right", but that's just personal preference.

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.

After hearing this piece of work on two different occasions on the same day, I felt that I needed to have it. All the choices always make it difficult to choose, so I ended up buying this version. I am utterly amazed with this beautiful piece of music, by its the performers and just the cd in general.

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

I purchased this because I needed help learning this piece for our choir. It is perfect. It's just what I was looking for.

I purchased this CD for the positive reviews it has received, even thaugh I was looking for a digital recording of Faure's Requiem. Upon inspecting the CD, I was pleasently surprised to find the DDD code at the back! So if you're still hesitating to purchase this CD because of the Amazon A-D code above, this is a DDD (all digital) and not an A-D (Analogue/Digital) recording. Enjoy!

This is one of the best recording of Faure' Requiem that I have found in quite some time.
Beautiful and heavenly music that lifts you out of yourself. Allow yourself to float in the glory of this recording.