In Paradisum: Fauré / Duruflé / Requiem
Once described as a "lullaby of death," Gabriel Fauré's Requiem is a work of supreme composure that seems to illustrate the gentlest of goings into that good night. This recording bucks the current trend favoring the composer's original version for reduced chamber orchestra, offering the fully orchestrated edition from 1899.  The result gives a solid, spacious context for Fauré's modal lyricism, his interplay of light and shadow, to unfold.  Conductor Myun-Whung Chung at times even suggests a dark undertow of despair, as in the funereal plunge and tread of the Introit, yet he is also keenly sensitive to the agnostic composer's essentially sensuous textures (listen to the dark amber  interweaving of inner string lines in the Offertorium), thereby escaping the  potential sentimentality that sometimes pits Fauré's vision unfavorably  against the robust fire and fury ofVerdi's Requiem. In this regard, Chung's choice of soloists is ideal. Cecilia Bartoli's rendition of the Pie Jesu will stop you in your tracks (simply one of the most achingly beautiful examples of her artistry), while Bryn Terfel uses the rich resonance of his baritone to powerful effect. Maurice Duruflé's Fauré-inspired Requiem, offered as the coupling, is likewise given in its fully orchestrated version. The patient serenity of its culminating In Paradisum seems to offer a harmony of the spheres for our age of anxiety.--Thomas May