Benjamin Britten - War Requiem (Gianandrea Noseda)

Information

Composer: Benjamin Britten

CD1:

• (01-04) War Requiem, Op. 66: Requiem aeternam
• (05-14) War Requiem, Op. 66: Dies irae
• (15-18) War Requiem, Op. 66: Offertorium

CD2:

• (01-02) War Requiem, Op. 66: Sanctus
• (03) War Requiem, Op. 66: Agnus Dei
• (04-08) War Requiem, Op. 66: Libera me

Ian Bostridge, tenor
Simon Keenlyside, baritone
Sabina Cvilak, soprano
The Choir of Eltham College
London Symphony Chorus
London Symphony Orchestra
Gianandrea Noseda, conductor

Date: 2012
Label: LSO Live
http://lsolive.lso.co.uk/products/britten-war-requiem

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Review

The half-century-old War Requiem live from London

This latest recording of Britten’s War Requiem arrives almost 50 years to the day after the work’s acclaimed premiere at Coventry Cathedral. Half a century on, the initial excitement has subsided but the number of recordings on sale (over a dozen at the last count) is a measure of how fully the work has been accepted into the regular choral repertoire, creating a very competitive market.

From its barely audible opening, Gianandrea Noseda’s live performance seeks to take the audience on a journey from the edge of consciousness to the blazing fires of the battlefield. In some of the quieter passages – the hushed cadence of ‘Kyrie eleison’ especially but also ‘Quid sum miser’ and ‘Recordare’ – the soft-focus halo of sound leaves little impression beyond a distant mush (though Noseda might reasonably object that the composer ignores the score’s pianissimo markings in his recording). It takes action to galvanise this performance into life and sections such as the ‘Dies irae’ and the ‘Offertorium’ are played for all they are worth, their climaxes reinforced by the LSO’s brilliant trumpets and cannon-like timpani.

While the intensity comes and goes in the Latin Mass, the Wilfred Owen settings are consistently involving. Ian Bostridge spins a beautiful line in the tenor’s lyrical passages, though he milks ‘Move him into the sun’ excessively, squeezing the tone in a way that is lachrymose in the wrong sense. Simon Keenlyside is excellent throughout and very touching in the intimacy of Owen’s ‘Strange Meeting’. Decisive and confident, the soprano Sabina Cvilak has the Slavic edge to her voice that has seemed hard-wired into the part since the incomparable Vishnevskaya.

Noseda has real strengths in these fine soloists and the high-quality playing of the LSO but the ambience of the Barbican is a drawback – not a killer, like the acoustic of Coventry Cathedral at the premiere, but rather drab, with chorus and soloists alike lacking in immediacy. I chose to make detailed comparisons with another live recording, the one conducted by Kurt Masur with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Noseda’s keen sense of drama is preferable to the mild-mannered Masur. In almost every respect, though, Britten’s own recording remains in a class of its own.

-- Richard Fairman, Gramophone

More reviews:
MusicWeb International  RECORDING OF THE MONTH

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/may/10/britten-war-requiem-lso-review

http://www.allmusic.com/album/britten-war-requiem-mw0002357726

https://www.amazon.com/Britten-Requiem-London-Symphony-Orchestra/dp/B00713Y2R6

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Benjamin Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British classical music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. Britten's other works range from orchestral to choral, solo vocal, chamber and instrumental as well as film music. Britten was also a celebrated pianist and conductor, performing many of his own works in concert and on record.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Britten

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Gianandrea Noseda (born 23 April 1964) is an Italian conductor. He studied piano, composition and conducting in Milan and furthered his conducting studies with Donato Renzetti, Myung-Whun Chung and Valery Gergiev. Noseda was Principal Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic from 2002 to 2011 and now has the title of conductor laureate. In January 2016, Noseda was appointed music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. In February, 2016, he was also appointed one of the two "principal guest conductors" of the London Symphony Orchestra.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianandrea_Noseda
http://www.gianandreanoseda.com/home_e.aspx

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