Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dead brilliant !, 3 Jul 2001
This is a fabulous recording of Verdi's immortal Heaven-shaking masterpiece and one that still leads the field almost thirteen years after it's release.The late,great Robert Shaw draws magical work out of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus whilst those soloists are just amazing ! Special mention must be made of the quite stunning soprano Susan Dunn who negotiates Verdi's hair-raising vocal demands with a grace and ease that is utterly bewitching.Also,the tenor Jerry Hadley should step forward and take a bow for his superb rendition of the "Hostias".He gets just the right blend of reverence and supplication in this magical passage,and for me it is the still,calm eye of the deliciously bruising and battering Requiem storm that so gloriously rattles our windows and threatens to lift our very roofs with it's mind-numbing power.You might think I'm just engaging in hyperbole there,but let me warn you now that Telarc are not kidding when they remark on the wide dynamic range of their recording,and should you be so unwise as to crank up the volume too far during the beautiful "Introit" and "Kyrie",then you will be left surrounded by the ruins of your house once THE most astonishingly explosive detonations on the bass drum in the "Dies irae" have done with you ! The operatic choruses that fill up the second disc are splendidly done and that "Va pensiero" from Nabucco is nothing short of gorgeous.However,I really wish that Telarc would bring this marvellous performance of the Requiem out on a single CD one of these days.It's certainly feasible with an overall timing of around 84 minutes or so,and this would have the effect of killing two birds with one stone i.e. no more laboriously changing discs (and disrupting my blissful reverie in the process) in order to get to the outstanding "Agnus Dei" and "Libera me".And perhaps more importantly,a single CD reissue would bring this fabulous account within much easier reach of all those eager collectors,like myself,who operate on a fairly meagre budget,and for whom this set is quite a major investment. In the meantime,please enjoy what is a benchmark recording of a sacred work that merits a place in everyone's music collection.It's been a cornerstone of my own modest edifice of sonic treasures for over a decade now,and I'm quite certain you will come to treasure it as much as I have done and continue to do so.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
THE 'faultless' REQUIEM?, 10 Oct 2007
I purchased this PG Rosette recording with high hopes, only to discover that the hype is (and is still) unjustified. Of the four soloists, only Curry and the late Hadley are entirely satisfactory, though regrettably the latter isn't as closely miked as his colleagues (but this is perhaps due to his lightweight timbre). Plishka's bass is rather dry, his 'Hostias' trill being quite memorably wobbly. Dunn isn't uplifting (ie too straight-faced) in 'Libera me': in addition to a shrieked-out B flat, her intonation is rather unreliable - is it possible that nobody has ever noticed her 'aetArnam' and repeated 'LibeRRa'? The openings of 'Dies irae' are tame throughout (far from being hair-raising), and Shaw's tempi in 'Libera me' are erratic. My favourite Verdi opera being DON CARLO, its chorus is not only bell-less but also mercilessly butchered (no point in recording it at all). Telarc's parsimonious tracking for the REQUIEM isn't as annoying as the performance itself, which I thought was blemishless. I might have enjoyed this recording if it were my first REQUIEM, but I got it in order to discover what the fuss is all about long after hearing the likes of Price (Reiner, Karajan, and Solti), Tebaldi (Toscanini, and de Sabata), Freni (Karajan), Gheorghiu (Abbado), Arroyo (Bernstein), and other soloists of both sexes on CD and DVD: no comparison.
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