- Purchase a product from the Music Store sold by Amazon.co.uk and receive £1 to use on an album download in our MP3 Store. Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
Amazon.co.uk allows you to pay for your items in your local currency. Restrictions apply. Learn More. |
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s
Songs from this album are available to purchase as MP3s. Click on "Buy MP3" or
view the MP3 Album.
|
Disc 1:
Disc 2:
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
WARS FOR FLAGS,
By DAVID BRYSON (Glossop Derbyshire England) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Britten: War Requiem (Audio CD)
A great deal of careful planning has gone into this production. The work calls for a separate boys' choir and chamber orchestra in addition to the main forces, and the need to convey a sense of space has been taken very seriously. Apparently no church in all Scotland was considered large enough, and the recording was finally done in a converted large workshop at the site of the old Harland and Wolff shipyard in Clydebank, only half a mile from our family home when I was a boy. I find the result outstandingly successful. The sense of space and distance must surely have been what Britten was after, and it needs to be played at a high volume setting. This will not blow you out of the room or disturb the neighbours - Britten's Requiem is a much quieter piece in general than not only Verdi's but even Mozart's. Britten takes the text that Verdi took including the Libera me prayer from the graveside service and adds the In paradisum set by Faure although not by Verdi, and intersperses it with poems by Wilfred Owen. Despite the length of the text there is comparatively little repetition of words, and the overall duration of the work is only roughly similar to Verdi's. For all the traditional text, this is not a traditional Requiem as even Verdi's was although he had little in the way of religious conviction. Owen's poems are the spiritual core of the War Requiem, the liturgical text serving as background. When the poet asks 'All death will He annul?' I sense that Britten's answer is 'Not likely'. Creation will not rise again to answer to any judge, and what we destroy stays destroyed. The nearest we are given to a pacifist's answer to the unsolved problem is in the lines addressed to the field-gun Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm, Conductor, soloists and the Scottish ensembles cover themselves with distinction from start to finish. Speeds in some of the choral episodes are on the swift side, but that gives me no problem where the choral texts are something akin to a chain of linking recitatives. The soloists are worthy successors to Britten's own, the choral work is admirable and the BBC Scottish Orchestra is a fine band indeed these days. Above all, don't be nervous or hesitant about turning the volume up if you want to get the proper impact from the careful staging of the production. Naxos - well done again, very well done indeed. There is not a recording of this great work that I know from any source, perhaps not even from Britten himself with Pears and Fischer-Dieskau, that I could recommend ahead of this one.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Budget edition but very good,
By
This review is from: Britten: War Requiem (Audio CD)
The Naxos version of Britten's War Requiem, although a "budget" edition is superb. The rich textures of the music and various vocal ensembles are unobtrusively evident. The balance is about perfect... all can be heard clearly and the atmosphere of this extremely powerful and highly emotive music is faithfully delivered. If you've never heard the War Requiem this is a good introduction at a very nice price. I'd still say the best version is the Rattle / CBO edition, but experiencing it live is overwhelming.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
True Music,
By
This review is from: Britten: War Requiem (Audio CD)
"We laughed, knowing that better men would come,And greater wars; when each proud fighter brags, He wars on Death -- for lives; not men -- for flags." Like another reviewer I first heard this when I was quite young, and despite its tritonal and sometimes arch intonality, it stuck like glue. Each time I hear it (and I'm 35 now) I hear something in it that moves me. Britten was a master of orchestral effects as the Dies Irae testifies but, exhilirating as these are it's the profound humanist anger of Wilfred Owen's poetry that first grabs you. But then after that excoriating expression of the madness of war - set in a way that orchestrates the beauty of a male voice like nothing I've ever heard ever before, it's the quite stunning, stunning, soprano parts that stay with you. Absolutely hauntingly, disturbingly beautiful. Arguably the finest composition of the 20th century.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
|
|
![DG's 2-CD series [5]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51feK%2BFmSnL._AA60_.jpg)
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
