Arnold Rosner: Requiem, Op. 59

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Arnold Rosner’s 1970s Requiem is a massive work, drawing on multiple secular and religious texts. It’s an intense experience, but certainly not without its emotional rewards. — BBC Music Magazine, December 2020, 3 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 4th Sep 2020
Catalogue No: TOCC0545
Label: Toccata Classics
Length: 69 minutes

Gramophone Magazine

Critics' Choice 2020

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Rosner, A: Requiem, Op. 59

Work length1:09:16

$14.00

$18.15

$24.50

Feargal Mostyn-Williams (countertenor), Thomas Elwin (tenor), Gareth Brynmor John (baritone), Kelley Hollis (soprano)
Crouch End Festival Chorus, London Philharmonic Orchestra
Nick Palmer, David Temple

I. Overture (The Seventh Seal)

Track length11:16

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$3.85

$5.25

II. Recitative (Ein Wort, ein Satz)

Track length3:28

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

III. Toccata (Musica satanica)

Track length5:08

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

IV. Ballade (Les neiges d'antan)

Track length6:15

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

V. Sutra (Enmei jukku kannon gyo)

Track length9:48

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

VI. Madrigal (To All, to Each)

Track length6:27

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

VII. Organum (Lasciate ogni speranze)

Track length5:56

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

VIII. Prayer (Kaddish)

Track length6:42

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

IX. Passacaglia (Libera me)

Track length8:50

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

X. Und wieder Dunkel, ungeheuer

Track length5:26

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

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Far from being a treatment of the usual Latin, the Requiem of the New York-based Arnold Rosner (1945–2013) sets spiritual and secular texts on death from a number of the world’s cultures, including Whitman, Villon, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a sutra from Zen Buddhism and the Jewish Kaddish. The work of a young man (Rosner was 28 when he wrote it), this Requiem is both monumental and wildly energetic – but it also encompasses passages of transcendent beauty. His musical language clothes the modal harmony and rhythm of pre-Baroque polyphony in rich Romantic colors, producing a style that is instantly recognizable and immediately appealing. Some of the music was first written for an aborted operatic treatment of Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal, where the main character plays chess with Death; in like spirit, Rosner’s Requiem is a major statement of human defiance in the face of mortality, even if its gentle closing pages bring uneasy acceptance.

Reviews

December 2020

Arnold Rosner’s 1970s Requiem is a massive work, drawing on multiple secular and religious texts. It’s an intense experience, but certainly not without its emotional rewards.

November 2020

This is nothing less than an extraordinary musical accomplishment, written by a composer who at its composition had yet to hear a polished performance of any of his orchestral works.

October 2020

Rosner’s Requiem is a work notable for the juxtaposition of a wide range of expressive extremes, but also for delicacy and an imaginative use of instrumental colours...The orchestra plays very well and the chorus is committed. The male soloists are fine and Toccata are to be warmly congratulated for the recording quality and their production of this very fine CD.

Arnold Rosner: Requiem, Op. 59

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