Editor's Choice: Verdi's Requiem

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VERDI'S REQUIEM IS ALWAYS SAID TO BE SCARIER than most of the other big requiems, focusing on the fear of damnation - which the composer depicts with blasting horns of judgment, drums of terror, whipping strings of hellfire, and the like - rather than the promise of redemption - e.g. Faure’s otherworldly tremolos. But in reality, the lushness of Verdi’s vocal writing and, in general, the beauty of his melodic material are so ravishing that even mediocre performances of the work can prove comforting. If humankind can produce religious music this gorgeous, could we really ever be condemned?

In this elegantly engineered recording, though, in which Enoch zu Guttenberg conducts the Neubeuern Choral Society and the European Symphony Orchestra, we hear wonderfully delicious performances, by a superbly prepared orchestra and chorus.  And the four soloists - Pamela Coburn, soprano; Trudeliese Schmidt, mezzo; Vinson Cole, tenor; and Kurt Rydl, bass - are so generously warm in their meditations on the possibility of doom that one feels truly grateful for their thoughts. 

HIGHLIGHT: Schmidt is the best, especially in the Lacrimosa - both scary and consoling at the same time, as she laments that tearful day “on which will rise from ashes guilty Man for judgment.”

HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE:  This concert - a benefit for Artists United for Nature - was recorded live at Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, which opened in 1880, was largely destroyed during the Second World War, and rebuilt in the 1970s, with the help of von Karajan and others.

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