Requiem BBC 4

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

And from John Rutter.

I wonder if he minded that his own Requiem went unmentioned?

This was overshadowed by the vastly inferior one by ALW.

Getting back to Mozart, there was a broadcast not so long ago on Afternoon on 3 with Abbado and Lucerne Festival forces, incorporating the "best bits" of different completions. Rather good.

[VodkaDilc]

I'm now about halfway through and my concentration is under strain. After 40+ years of telling school children not to talk during music, I find all this chatter over the music very grating. It's good to hear Davis, Cairns, Gardner and Jane G, but I feel that the other bunch of assorted singers have not much to add. There's a difference between a real expert (those mentioned above) and others, whose views are no more valid than yours or mine. Nice to hear the ex-archbishop though!

Some of those singers/talking heads, emoting all over the place, reminded me of the awful Prince Charles/Parry programme - do we need to be told that something is 'absolutely exquisite'?

[Thropplenoggin]

Did Biber get a mention? His Requiem à 15 is a stunner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1aWmda0WqM&list=PL2745B3C7BE0AD63E

[jean]

No he didn't.

There were really only token mentions of settings made before the Requiem burst out of what the programme regarded as its liturgical straitjacket.

I found the chronology frustrating at first, as it leapt straight from plainsong to the fully-fledged 'operatic' settings of the nineteenth century, probably because it expected us to be familiar with those.

It would be good to have another programme tracing the history of those earlier developments, the setting of individual movements as Josquin did using the plainsong Requiem aeternam and its text in his Deploration for the death of Ockeghem, why it took so long for the Dies Irae to be set polyphonically at all.

[Nick Armstrong]

Thanks for the reminder about this - missed it last night but catching up on iplayer... and I see, for those wanting a broadcast for recording, it's repeated this coming Wednesday/Thursday night (1am)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03hhqck

Having stood a few times before his tomb in the Père Lachaise cemetary, it's interesting to see Cherubini's place emphasised...

Could have done without the old story about Mozart's Requiem and mysterious strangers

[Barbirollians]

I really enjoyed Rowan Williams's contributions - I am afraid that the fragile coalition that is the C of e stopped him being an outstanding Archbishop of Canterbury .

[DublinJimbo]

Some more points I noticed while watching:

1.
It was a joy to see recordings from the Proms from the era before those wretched electronic coloured panels came in to add such woeful, and tacky, distraction.

2.
Colin Davis's contributions were wonderful (poignant also), both what he had to say and what he conducted. I was especially struck by the way his spectacles slipped all the way down his nose at the conclusion of the Berlioz Requiem.

3.
The layout of the forces for what Edward Gardner conducted was very strange. Could it ever by practical for the conductor to be placed between orchestra and chorus?

[David-G]

I must admit to struggling with Berlioz's big choral numbers - all a bit overblown for me.

But they are intercut with the sparest of choral numbers. It is the contrast that makes both so effective.

[Old Grumpy]

... and I see, for those wanting a broadcast for recording, it's repeated this coming Wednesday/Thursday night (1am)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03hhqck

Excellent - many thanks for this signpost. I meant to record it but it passed me by.

OG

[Barbirollians]

But they are intercut with the sparest of choral numbers. It is the contrast that makes both so effective.

Fair point but still just too much bombast for me .

[antongould]

Excellent - many thanks for this signpost. I meant to record it but it passed me by. :cheers:

OG

....and from me too Rumpole very much looking forward to it.....

[Hitch]

Most enjoyable. I wonder what a Sunday evening airing of it on BBC Two or, whisper it, One would do for Radio 3's subsequent RADAR numbers - might that be more effective than any number of tweets and trails?

[Old Grumpy]

Most enjoyable.

Just watched it - agreed!