There's no such thing as too many Requiem's

[ivyfic]

My choir started working on Britten's War Requiem on Monday. It is quite something. Since I've had bits of the Dies Irae going through my head, but don't yet have a recording, I was looking through my collection of Requiem recordings. I have five: Mozart, Faure, Durufle, Brahms and Weill. I've performed all of those but the Weill, which is for men's chorus only, and done the Mozart and the Faure twice each. I've also performed Rutter's Requiem (oh, Rutter—as my voice teacher used to call him, "Episcopop"), but I don't appear to have a recording.

Which leads me to the gaping hole in my collection of Requiems: Verdi. I've never even heard the Verdi Requiem, a piece which most of my fellow choir members have sung multiple times. So it's high time I get a recording. So I'm throwing this out there in the hopes that somebody on the vast internets is a classical music snob: what's the definitive recording of Verdi's Requiem? I see both a Leonard Bernstein and a Robert Shaw, both of whom are generally reliable, but I'm wondering if there is one recording that everyone agrees is the best. Thoughts?

Comments

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

what's the definitive recording of Verdi's Requiem?

Ha!

The Requiem provides everyone with their chance to work out their prejudices regarding at least two of the soloists. Hence, critical consensus is nigh-impossible. Whichever version you choose, you will be tin-eared in someone's eyes.

That said, I've always been happy with the Shaw.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I was having fun reading the amazon comments on these this morning. People going on and on about Toscanini's "radical tempi" and the vibrato in the sopranos and, my favorite, one person who commented on the second Karajan recording that there was a trumpet trill that they'd never heard before, that was in the score (implying that they not only own the score, but checked) that was too prominent.

By comparison, the comments on Rutter's Requiem are more along the lines of "AWESOME!!!!"

I'll probably go with the Shaw. I think I'd prefer the Bernstein, but it looks like it's out of print, and the used copies are too expensive. I have the Shaw Rachmaninoff Vesper's, though, which I'm not really a fan of. He's too precise and his tempi are too slow--it sucks the drama out of it, I think.

I've been listening through my other Requiem recordings--I think I need to find better ones for a lot of these. The chorus in my Faure has so little enunciation they might as well be singing "waa waa waa" like Charlie Brown's mother in the cartoon. And my Durufle is just distorted for some reason. Do I dare go with the Shaw Faure/Durufle Requiem CD? I don't know!!!