Tuesday 2 February 2010

Record of the year 2009: The Verdi Requiem

Verdi: Requiem. Orchestra e Coro dell´Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Rome, 2009. Live recording. Cond: Antonio Pappano. Soloists: Anja Harteros, Sonia Ganassi, Rolando Villazón, René Pape. Further information here.

As far as I am concerned this is THE release of 2009. And a Verdi Requiem of a quality I have not heard in decades of recording. All the pieces come together for Antonio Pappano, despite an odd engineering choice, making the initial 2 minutes inaudible. But from there on, there is very little to criticize in a performance of rare coherence. Combined with an excellent soloist quartet this is not to be missed.


The bottom line (scale of 1-5, 3=average):

5

2 comments:

Micaela said...

Nice to see you back, mostly opera, I love your blog! But I know how time-consuming they can be to keep.

curzon said...

Absolutely love this recording. The best live Req of my experience was Pappano, LSO, Fleming, Urmana and Pape. Unfortunately, although it was filmed, it was never issued on DVD

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