The best things are the ‘Pie Jesu’ solos: Popp sophisticated and secular, Te Kanawa warmer and franker. Otherwise, the Fauré turns slow, bland and bourgeois in an over-Anglican way, despite the professional chorus. Nimsgern sounds wobbly and wan. Davis is less inhibited nowadays but, even twenty years ago, the more innocent and expansive Duruflé loosened him up so that the big moments achieve their proper thrills, while the prevailing calmer moods remain tender, rather than chilly. -- BBC Music Magazine
The Fauré Requiem is a problematic work in that the composer left it in several versions, none of which is considered perfectly satisfactory. To this day performers assemble and re-orchestrate their own versions from the various manuscripts.
The Duruflé Requiem is an at once appealing work, strikingly original, tonal but modern in sound, endlessly fascinating. The "Sanctus* is tremendously exciting, the "Paradisum" gorgeously other-worldly. This chamber-sized performance, apparently arranged by the composer, for small choir and organ stresses the intimacy and integrity of the work and is quite successful.
The Duruflé Requiem is an at once appealing work, strikingly original, tonal but modern in sound, endlessly fascinating. The "Sanctus* is tremendously exciting, the "Paradisum" gorgeously other-worldly. This chamber-sized performance, apparently arranged by the composer, for small choir and organ stresses the intimacy and integrity of the work and is quite successful.
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