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Given its popularity among contemporary composers - Beethoven for one - it is not a little surprising that Cherubini's Requiem is barely known.
And it is no minor work either, but rather a highly imaginative and involving take on the format, painted in technicolour of the darkest hues.
If it boasts one thing, it is an astonishing setting of the Dies Irae, which opens with a shocking brass and tam-tam declamation, and proceeds to the (almost bathetic) final Amens by way of a helter skelter of orchestral colour and startling harmony. Most exciting is the propulsive central section, where a simple (often single note) melody perches on increasingly frantic string motifs, building to an emotionally shattering return of the opening theme for the Confutatis maledictus.
And this is no isolated highlight. The bleak orchestral landscape of the Introit and Kyrie (here one movement) has a wintry fury of Shakespearean soul; the Offertory holds chill and warmth in equipoise in its two sections, and the contrapuntal setting of the text starting Quam olim Abrahae is garish, vigorous and just the right side of bombast. The setting of the Angus Dei, meanwhile, is daring both in its explorative harmonies and its deathly climactic fade to silence (a moment which Berlioz noted "surpasses anything of the kind that has been written”).
The Boston Baroque under Martin Pearlman provides an excellent performance of the work, though the choir's pronunciation lacks a true sense of the Italian text, and certain held notes hover about the pitch. Then again, phrasing is superlative (especially in the Graduale) and, if the group lacks the base power to evoke the Dies Irae's "searing flames", its musicianship more than compensates. The period orchestra meanwhile astonishes in the clarity of its line, and the close recording wallows in the violence of the timpani and the harrowing precision of the celli.
The two companion pieces are of mixed quality. Cherubini's March Funèbre is difficult to assess: in terms of orchestration and melody, it would seem to surpass anything in the Requiem, yet the ridiculous overuse of tam-tam and timpani serves to undermine the work's impact and turn it into something of a token gesture. Beethoven's Elegiac Song, meanwhile, is a model of restraint, and the Boston Baroque perform with unfailing commitment and intelligence.
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