Pappano's conducting maintains a firm control of his forces, showing a sense of drama that includes an awareness of the importance of some crucial moments of silence. Pappano's soloists are evenly matched. Soprano Anja Harteros is beautifully controlled, while mezzo Sonia Ganassi supplies a properly Italianate lyric intensity. ...tenor Rolando Villazón displays... his regular fierce personal commitment to whatever he is singing... René Pape's bass is large and sonorous... The sound captures the work's enormously broad sound picture, as well as a sense of almost infinite receding depth in its overall perspective.

a gargantuan, extraordinary performance, given by an extraordinary musical cast...Pappano, with his Italian heritage and operatic career, quite obviously has this music coursing through his veins. Recorded in concert, it catapults the listener into the concert hall with its energetic force and surging rhythms. The dramatic contrasts are magnificently worked

A Requiem to relish, Pappano's recording is a modern classic. …an authentically Italianate feel is important to any performance of the Requiem. Second nature to Toscanini and Giulini, it is a quality that contributes hugely to the eloquence and allure of Pappano's performance. You hear this early in the sense of a live narrative unfolding which mezzo soprano Sonia Ganassi brings to the "Liber scriptus"...Harteros's lighter...singing, radiant and sympathetic, suits Pappano's reading to perfection... Rolando Villazón is similarly discreet in the self-abasing loveliness of his "Ingemisco"... the bass René Pape is as fine as any on record, strong yet discreet, with a mastery of the subtly inflected cantabile line that is profoundly satisfying.

Pappano surprisingly treats the work primarily as ritual. This is a performance of measured treads and rhythms, ­advancing like some vast processional that flattens everything in its path. Its inexorability leaves you feeling jittery...The choral singing is formidable.