Britten: War Requiem, Op. 66

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[Noseda] delivers it afresh as a scintillating achievement...Sabina Cvilak's soprano has the focus, though not always the required gravitas, while tenor Ian Bostridge brings a piercing sincerity... — BBC Music Magazine, June 2012, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 8th May 2012
Catalogue No: LSO0719
Label: LSO Live
Length: 83 minutes

Presto Recording of the Week

7th May 2012

Britten: War Requiem, Op. 66

Work length1:23:31

$26.40

$33.00

$38.30

Ian Bostridge, Simon Keenlyside, Sabina Cvilak
London Symphony Chorus, London Symphony Orchestra, Choir of Eltham College
Gianandrea Noseda

i. Requiem Aeternam - Requiem aeternam

Track length3:36

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ii. Requiem Aeternam - Te decet hymnus

Track length3:00

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iii. Requiem Aeternam - "What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?"

Track length2:36

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iv. Requiem Aeternam - Kyrie eleison

Track length1:32

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v. Dies Irae - Dies irae

Track length3:31

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vi. Dies Irae - "Bugles sang, saddening the evening air"

Track length2:31

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vii. Dies Irae - Liber scriptus

Track length2:59

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viii. Dies Irae - "Out there, we've walked quite friendly up to Death"

Track length1:41

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ix. Dies Irae - Recordare Iesu pie

Track length3:50

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x. Dies Irae - Confutatis maledictis

Track length1:04

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xi. Dies Irae - "Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm"

Track length2:09

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xii. Dies Irae - Dies irae

Track length3:00

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xiii. Dies Irae - "Move him into the sun"

Track length4:10

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xiv. Dies Irae - Pie Iesu Domine

Track length1:34

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xv. Offertorium - Domine Jesu Christe

Track length1:18

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xvi. Offertorium - Sed signifer Sanctus

Track length1:51

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xvii. Offertorium - "So Abram rose, and clave the wood"

Track length3:22

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xvii. Offertorium - Hostias et preces tibi

Track length2:39

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xix. Sanctus - Sanctus

Track length7:04

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$1.75

xx. Sanctus - "After the blast of lightning from the East"

Track length3:33

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xxi. Agnus Dei - "One ever hangs where shelled roads part" Agnus Dei

Track length3:09

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xxii. Libera Me - Libera me

Track length8:02

$1.20

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$1.75

xxiii. Libera Me - "It seemed that out of battle I escaped"

Track length2:50

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xxiv. Libera Me - " 'None', said the other"

Track length6:49

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xxv. Libera Me - "Let us sleep now…" In paradisum

Track length4:26

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xxvi. Libera Me - Requiescant in pace

Track length1:15

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Favourites, Benjamin Britten

Presto’s founder Maurice Millward sifts through a treasure-chest of Britten recordings and offers his thoughts on which paint the best portrait of this influential genius.

Recording of the Week, Britten: War Requiem

7th May 2012

Gianandrea Noseda leads an Italianate performance of Britten’s great depiction of ‘the pity of war’, with the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and soloists Sabina Cvilak, Ian Bostridge and Simon Keenlyside.

For his first LSO Live recording, Gianandrea Noseda is joined by three of today’s most widely acclaimed singers for a magnificent performance of Benjamin Britten’s choral masterpiece.

Premiered 50 years ago on 30 May 1962, the 'War Requiem' was commissioned for the re-dedication of Coventry Cathedral, which was destroyed by bombing raids during the Second World War.

Using the Latin mass of the dead, interspersed with texts by war poet Wilfred Owen, Britten, a pacifist and conscientious objector, created a work that both mourned the dead and pleaded the futility of war. The 'War Requiem' was to become one of the defining choral works of the 20th Century.

Gianandrea Noseda was the first foreign Principal Guest Conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg and over the past decade his reputation in the opera house and concert hall has blossomed. He regularly conducts the LSO, as well as many of the world’s other great orchestras, and is Music Director of the Teatro Regio in Turin.

Ian Bostridge, Simon Keenlyside and Sabina Cvilak perform regularly in the world’s leading opera houses and are renowned for their performances in Britten’s music. The LSO and LSC have both enjoyed long relationships with the composer and appeared on the first recording of the 'War Requiem', conducted by Britten himself.

'Noseda’s unashamedly dramatic interpretation held the audience transfixed. It was all so vivid … an overwhelming evocation of the grief, the waste and the pity of war’ The Times (UK)

High resolution recording, live at the Barbican in October 2011

Stereo and multi-channel 5.0

Total playing time 83m 46s

‘Noseda marshalled the finest War Requiem that I have heard'

The New Yorker (USA)

Reviews

June 2012

[Noseda] delivers it afresh as a scintillating achievement...Sabina Cvilak's soprano has the focus, though not always the required gravitas, while tenor Ian Bostridge brings a piercing sincerity to all his solos...Keenlyside takes a different approach: sonorous, commanding, but sometimes lacking the necessary bitter edge...Nevertheless, this is an important issue: Noseda's judgement of pace is unerring, and the orchestra and chorus simply superb.

28th April 2012

The LSO and its Chorus are on cracking form, and the soloists are as good as you will get…No one should be without the composer’s recording, also with the LSO, but half a century later, Noseda’s Dramatic, pulsating account represents another landmark.

July 2012

Noseda's live performance seeks to take the audience on a journey from the edge of consciousness to the blazing fires of the battlefield...Bostridge spins a beautiful line in the tenor's lyrical passages...Keenlyside is excellent throughout...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

May 2012

Noseda offers an account rich in drama...forging a sense of momentum and cohesion..Few singers deliver text with as much conviction and engagement as Bostridge, who finds the right tone for the bitterness of war...[Keenlyside] sounds every inch the soldier, conveying the pain of war and a bleak sense of loss...Cvilak is very good, particularly fine in floating her high notes in the 'Lacrimosa'..this performance is incredibly moving

July 2012

the LSO Live account has great clarity and tonal sophistication. The Eltham choir is crisp and well balanced...The LSO certainly play well and the brass in the Dies irae are especially thrilling...All else pales next to Bostridge’s deeply moving, extraordinarily nuanced singing in Futility...The LSO chorus deserve a mention in dispatches. Their quiet singing in Pie Jesu is ineffably beautiful.

7th May 2012

Noseda gives no indication of being a mere stand-by, and I particularly like the way that he brings an Italianate sense of theatricality to this work, heightening the inherent drama of the piece in a way that reminded me in several places of the Requiem setting by Giuseppe Verdi...a deeply moving account of this thought-provoking piece.

15th April 2012

Noseda proves a more than worthy substitute [for Colin Davis], easily encompassing the dramatic scale of the work...Sabina Cvilak has a bright, silvery penetrating timbre. Ian Bostridge’s tenor is as individual and idiosyncractic as Pears’s in its own way. Simon Keenlyside, too, is magnificent, while the two choirs relish their grateful, inspiring music.

10th May 2012

[Noseda] brings a strong sense of Italianate lyricism to bear on the score, reminding us of Britten's conscious debt to Verdi's Requiem. The choral singing is fervent and intense, the playing fierce and sensitive by turns. Sabina Cvilak is the thrilling, hieratic soprano, though her male counterparts

4th May 2012

the two-CD set certainly captures the thrill of the moment in a reading notable both for its hushed intensity and dramatic sweep. Noseda’s an Italian, after all, and the clamorous Dies irae and supercharged choral prayers wouldn’t disgrace a Verdi opera...The LSO and the London Symphony Chorus are the performance’s rock: they start on top form and stay that way. Another essential recording, with or without the Britten centenary.

classicalsource.com 31st May 2012

Noseda conducts the most blazing War Requiem I have heard in any circumstances...The LSO’s brass section rips into the score’s martial elements with full-blooded ferocity...This is a searing recording, a match for the very best and more powerful than any other version I know in communicating Britten’s anti-war agenda. Fifty years on, here is a War Requiem for our own troubled times.

CD Choice

In some ways this is the most affecting and emotionally draining reading the work has ever received — and that includes the premiere recording by Britten itself, which established a high benchmark for many years. This is a considerable achievement.

Britten: War Requiem, Op. 66

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